Israel and the Middle East News Update
Thursday, July 9
Headlines:
Israeli Citizen Held in Gaza for Last 10 Months Hamas: Israel Asked for Bodies of Soldiers Hamas Announces 2 New Missile Systems US Leaving Israel in the Dark on Iran Talks, say Israeli Officials Powers to Up Pressure for Deal as Congress Deadline Looms France not backing Away from Plans to Submit UN Resolution Secret deal between Lieberman and Netanyahu Prosecution Lets Olmert Stay out of Jail while Awaiting Appeal
Commentary: The Daily Beast: “Israel Is the Iran Deal’s Biggest Loser” By Michael Koplow Yedioth Ahronoth: “How much are Israel's haters paying religious affairs minister?” By Ben Dror Yemini
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 July 9, 2015 Ha’aretz Israeli Citizen Held in Gaza for Last 10 Months An Israeli man has been missing for nearly 10 months after crossing into the Gaza Strip last September. An Israeli court lifted reporting restrictions on the disappearance of Avera Mengistu on Thursday morning following a request from Haaretz. The family been critical of the state for its low- key response, saying the matter would have been handled differently if Israeli-Ethiopian Avera Mengistu were white. The family has not met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and he has not responded to a letter they sent after the incident, according to sources close to the family.
Ynet News Hamas: Israel Asked for Bodies of Soldiers The leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashal, said Wednesday that Israel has sent messages to the group through a European intermediary, asking the organization to return the bodies of two soldiers in their possession since Operation Protective Edge. According to Mashal, Hamas told the intermediary that the organization will not conduct negotiations with or supply any information about the two soldiers until Israel releases Shalit swap prisoners who were re-arrested. This is not the first time Hamas has claimed the existence of indirect talks with Israel to return the bodies. Last October, a member of Hamas's political echelon, Mohamed Nazal, said that there had been preparations to open a channel of indirect negotiation between the sides. Nazal claimed that the negotiations would begin soon; however, there has been no evidence of active negotiations between the group and Israel.
Jerusalem Post Hamas Announces 2 New Missile Systems Hamas announced on Wednesday the operational status of two new missile systems to be included in the Palestinian group's arsenal. In a statement marking the year anniversary of last summer's war in Gaza, Hamas said it has put into service the 'al-Attar A' and the 'Abu Shamala' missiles, named after Hamas commanders Raed al-Attar and Mohammed Abu Shamala, who were killed last August in Operation Protective Edge. "Time will prove their effectiveness," said Hamas spokesman Abu Oveida of the alleged new projectiles. He added that the war against Israel was "still ongoing," noting that the issue of releasing Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails was of priority for Hamas.
Times of Israel US Leaving Israel in the Dark on Iran Talks, say Israeli Officials The American negotiating team at the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna has not updated Israel on developments in the talks in nearly two weeks, Israeli and American officials acknowledged Tuesday. In a briefing to reporters in Vienna, senior American officials said that Wendy Sherman, who has led the Iran talks for the US, tried to contact Israel’s National Security Adviser Yossi Cohen three times over the past ten days, but scheduling conflicts prevented the calls from going through. A senior official in Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office confirmed that the last update from Sherman took place 12 days ago, but insisted, “we have not declined any offers for further updates.” 2
Times of Israel Powers to Up Pressure for Deal as Congress Deadline Looms Foreign ministers from major powers were set Thursday to turn the screws on Iran to finalize a historic nuclear deal on the eve of a deadline to present it to US lawmakers. If the US Congress does not receive the text by early Friday morning Vienna time — midnight in Washington — it makes the approval process longer and potentially more problematic. But despite this pressure, and almost two weeks of talks in the Austrian capital, it is unclear whether an accord aimed at ending a 13-year standoff can be sewn up at all, let alone in time. See also, Obama Admin Fears Iran Deal Will Release Billions for Terror Attacks (The Daily Beast)
Jerusalem Post France not backing Away from Plans to Submit UN Resolution France denied on Wednesday that it was backing away from plans to submit a UN Security Council resolution calling for a two-state solution based on the 1967 lines. The denial followed comments to the contrary by a senior Palestinian and a well-connected American Jewish official earlier in the week. “France has not given up,” a French Ministry spokesman said Wednesday at a daily press briefing. “A Security Council resolution would be useful to give a solid basis to new negotiations. But it must be consensual and then be implemented.” The comments came after the spokesman was asked about a statement that Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad Malki had made a day earlier. In an interview on a Palestinian radio station, Malki said that the French had backed away from their idea of presenting a Middle East resolution, largely because of US and Israeli opposition.
Channel 2 News Secret deal between Lieberman and Netanyahu Two months upon entering the opposition, Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman reached an agreement with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to the agreement, the Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu will be running representatives before the Committee for the Appointment of Judges, MK Nurit Koren from the Likud and MK Robert Ilatov from Yisrael Beiteinu from the opposition. The agreement ensures a block of 67 MKs will elect the two. The significance of the move is that the Israeli right will block three of the nine members of the committee, a block which will allow them to veto the appointment of Israeli Supreme Court judges that they don’t want. See also, “Secret Lieberman, Likud deal to grant right-wing veto power over judicial appointments (Ha’aretz)
Ha’aretz Prosecution Lets Olmert Stay out of Jail while Awaiting Appeal Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will not being going to prison just yet for accepting hundreds of thousands of shekels from American businessman Morris Talansky, after the prosecution agreed to delay implementation of his eight-month sentence until the appeal of his conviction and sentence is heard by the Supreme Court. On March 30 Olmert was convicted by the Jerusalem District Court of fraud, breach of trust and accepting something fraudulently under aggravated circumstances, charges he had been acquitted of in July 2012. He was convicted of accepting envelopes of cash from Talansky and keeping the money in a special kitty, without reporting to the tax authorities or the state comptroller.
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Politico – July 9, 2015 Israel Is the Iran Deal’s Biggest Loser
As is so often the case, Israeli maximalism is doing the country no favors.
By Michael Koplow
With the latest deadline for nuclear talks with Iran looming at the end of the week, we can already predict the biggest loser in the event of a deal: Israel. An agreement along the lines of what has been reported is not what Israel wanted. It was never going to be. But the shortsighted, take-no-prisoners stance of the Israeli government has guaranteed that its concerns got shorter shrift than was absolutely necessary. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s incessant calls to prohibit any Iranian enrichment of uranium—when it was clear very early on that the P5+1 was not going to proceed along such lines—did not serve to set a negotiating baseline. Instead, it ended up marginalizing Israel and created a situation in which the American negotiating team became even more indifferent to Israeli interests. By making what was an unrealistic goal the centerpiece of his opposition strategy rather than focusing on attainable elements, such as thorough inspections or limits on ballistic missiles, Netanyahu damaged his own cause. The perception that he, not Iran, was the unreasonable party marginalized Netanyahu and assured that negotiators would not take anything else he said seriously, irrespective of the underlying truth at the heart of his position, namely that Iran is a bad actor that has spent decades fighting Israel and the West and destabilizing the Middle East. The arena of Iranian negotiations is not the only one in which Israel’s tendency to take an extreme position has obscured the justice of an underlying issue. While Iran is the threat that looms largest in the eyes of the Netanyahu government, another major one is diplomatic isolation, a multi-tentacled menace that requires a coordinated response if Israel is to defeat it. The danger is embodied by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which seeks to isolate Israel economically and culturally, but the larger risk lies with a growing perception among mass audiences that Israel deserves extra opprobrium for actions that are depicted as extraordinarily beyond the pale. Recognizing the danger of this development, the Israeli government has attacked it with guns blazing, but often in a way that leads to Israel shooting itself in the foot. One of the biggest drivers of Israel’s isolation is the portrayal of Israeli actions in Gaza, where Israel has conducted large-scale military operations to prevent rocket fire against Israeli population centers multiple times over the last decade, most prominently during Operation Cast Lead 2008, Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012 and Operation Protective Edge in 2014. In each instance, Israel has battled a designated terrorist organization that locates its own positions in densely populated civilian areas. Thus, no matter how many precautions Israel takes, Palestinian casualty numbers are far higher than Israeli ones. The challenges that Israel faces in these confrontations should be self-evident, as acknowledged by people like Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey. While Israel is not perfect, it does a good job in a nearly impossible situation anytime it goes into Gaza. But it does a terrible job defending these operations. 4
Rather than consistently make the reasonable and correct argument that civilian casualties are tragic but unavoidable given Hamas’s tactics and admit that Israel makes mistakes but does the best that it can, Israeli officials tend towards exaggeration. The most representative example is the claim that the IDF is “the most moral army in the world,” which has been made by prime ministers, defense ministers, deputy foreign ministers and others. The IDF certainly has high standards of conduct, investigates abuses when they occur, and operates in a security environment that presents challenges that no other military faces on such a constant and ongoing basis. It is also the case that IDF commanders and soldiers make decisions and take actions that violate the IDF’s own code of ethics and behavior. This latter fact does not make the IDF or its soldiers any different from soldiers anywhere at any time in history, and in no way should it subject the IDF to be singled out for special criticism. The IDF almost certainly does a better job than the vast majority of fighting forces would were they subject to the same conditions and opponents, but its soldiers are not generally immune from moral lapses. Claiming that the IDF is the most moral army in the world does not inoculate Israel from criticism; rather, it stirs opponents of Israel to redouble their efforts to tar the Jewish state, which only serves to highlight the Israeli misconduct that inevitably occurs in the course of fighting. Rather than wage the battle of ideas on a plane that it can win, Israeli officials create a playing field that is tilted against them from the start. When you have to defend not only that your soldiers acted appropriately far more often than not during the fog of war, but that your soldiers acted more appropriately than any other soldiers in the world do or would, you are doomed to fail. This is not to suggest that all Israel has to do is own up to its failings or moderate its rhetoric and its critics will melt away. Israel is always going to have a target on its back no matter how exemplary its behavior, which is the burden of being a Jewish state. But the double standard to which Israel is frequently subjected only becomes worse when Israeli leaders claim to be meeting a standard that no country could possibly meet, and easily discredited maximalist assertions make it far easier to ignore those Israeli claims very much rooted in reality. When your foreign minister and economy minister use the word terrorist to refer to a Palestinian leader who has not advocated violence and who your own head of domestic intelligence certifies has not engaged in terrorism, your legitimate complaints about that leader’s diplomatic intransigence and unwillingness to respond to negotiations tend to go unheeded. People who seek to delegitimize Israel or single it out as uniquely deserving of sanction are unlikely to be swayed by logic and fact, but their task is made easier when Israel itself stretches the bounds of logic and fact. In the process Israel ruins its credibility with those whose views on Israel are largely unformed. Rather than create unnecessary obstacles for itself, the Israeli government would be better served by an honest public assessment of what can and cannot be accomplished, what can and cannot be defended. It betrays a sense of insecurity to bluster on about unsubstantiated assertions, particularly when Israel is a fundamentally just, decent, democratic country that makes mistakes but is doing a good job under difficult circumstances. Owning up to missteps, including those of its own making, will not make Israel weaker, and will in fact earn it more respect among those who tend to be on Israel’s side. Whether the goal is containing the threat from Iran or containing the threat of international isolation, scorched 5 earth tactics only limit Israeli power and influence. Were Netanyahu and his government to focus on pushing for policies that are achievable and defending Israel on grounds that are more sustainable, they may find more success in meeting their objectives going forward.
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Yedioth Ahronoth – July 9, 2015 How Much are Israel's Haters Paying Religious Affairs Minister?
Those who insist on presenting Israel as a dark state are probably rejoicing over Shas minister's despicable comments against Reform Jews. By Ben Dror Yemini Israel is not one state. It's two. A state with a split personality. The first state is democratic, liberal and at the same time also Jewish. The second state is dark and ultra-Orthodox. One of its spokespeople is Religious Affairs Minister David Azoulay of Shas, who by mere words declared that as far as he is concerned, Reform Jews are not really Jews. Reform Jews, Azoulay should know, are the spinal cord of the United States Jewry together with the Conservatives, who – according to Azoulay's admission test – are not Jewish either. There is not a single institution – from AIPAC to the American Jewish Committee – which doesn’t have Reform Jews as part of their leadership. We are talking about pro-Israel bodies. We are talking about a community in which most members are our loyal supporters. Israel needs them, and they need Israel. Their love doesn’t depend on one dark minister or another. They understand the situation in Israel, but when only several weeks ago the President's Residence offended the Conservative community, and only last month that same Azoulay said that Reform Judaism was a disaster to the Jewish people, we have a problem. It isn't over – it seems that Israel is insisting on presenting a dark face, and these two affairs get marginal coverage or are considered an unimportant episode here. But in the US these things receive major coverage. The New York Times has already published a large piece about the disgraceful comment, and Jewish newspapers like The Forward are pulling their hair out. What is happening over there in Israel? There are many bad people, Israel haters, who insist on proving that we live in a dark state. They usually lie, but not always. They are probably rejoicing over Azoulay's existence, because evil people's job is done by fools. They usually inflate every racist and despicable comment made by some marginal rabbi in order to present Israel as a monster. This time they have a fat fish in their hands – a minister in the Israeli government. And they don't have to engage in any manipulation. He delivers the goods. How much are they paying him? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows something, and more than just something, about such miserable statements. He knows that they cause huge damage. He doesn’t have to throw Shas out of the government and he doesn’t have to fire Azoulay either. But he can, and must, denounce the rebellious minister's comments in the clearest and most profound manner. The ball is in his court. He had better do something.
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