March 4 2020 the Losers’ Virtual Reality

Home , Heba Yazbak, Nachman Shai, Ofer Cassif

Israel and the Middle East News Update

Wednesday, March 4

Headlines:

• With 93% of Votes Counted, Right-wing Bloc Loses Strength • Rivlin Likely to Task Netanyahu with Forming Govt’ on First Day of Trial • Awaiting Final Results, Netanyahu Eyes a Government with Only 60 • Joint List Head Claims 'Huge Success' with Historic 15-Seat Win • IDF General Met with Netanyahu After Visit to Coronavirus-Stricken Italy • Health Ministry Denies Israel to Quarantine American Tourists • UN's Nuclear Chief to Iran: Cooperate or Face New Crisis • Pro-Palestinian LGBT+ Artists Boycott Tel Aviv Film Festival

Commentary:

• Ha’aretz: “‘An Earthquake’: How Israel’s Arabs Achieved Their Historic Election Win” - By Judy Maltz, commentator at Ha’aretz • Israel Hayom: “The Losers’ Virtual Reality” - By Amnon Lord, political commentator at Israel Hayom

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 March 4, 2020 Ha’arezt With 93% of Votes Counted, Right-wing Bloc Loses Strength With over 93 percent of the votes counted in Israel's third and unprecedented election in one year, Netanyahu's Likud is currently the country's largest party. However, neither the premier nor his chief rival Benny Gantz are projected to get a clear Knesset majority behind them. Netanyahu is currently three seats shy of a 61-seat majority in the Knesset. The Joint List, an Arab-majority alliance of factions, maintained its position as the Israeli parliament’s third-largest party, according to the latest count, whereas Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu and left-wing alliance Labor-Gesher-Meretz lost ground. (TOI) ״See also, “With almost 95% of votes counted, Likud gains a seat to 36, Shas drops to 9

Times of Israel Rivlin Likely to Task Netanyahu with Forming Govt’ on First Day of Trial President Reuven Rivlin is set to task a candidate with forming a government on or before March 17, the same day Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s criminal trial begins. Rivlin is seen as most likely to task Netanyahu with forming a government, as preliminary results show the longtime leader with the clearest path toward building a coalition government. Likud is expected to garner 36 or 37 seats, while main rival Blue and White is predicted to finish with around 32 seats and only a path toward a minority government. The Central Elections Committee will present Rivlin with final election results on March 10, following an eight-day period after the vote stipulated by law, the president’s office said Tuesday. See also “Rivlin, Netanyahu set to clash over mandate to form government” (JPost)

Ha’aretz Awaiting Final Results, Netanyahu Eyes a Government with Only 60 The counting of the ballots, including those cast in double-sealed envelopes, is expected to be over by Tuesday night. Politicians and pundits widely believe that when the final results are in, the right- wing bloc will grow to 60 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, because the Joint List of Arab parties, which is currently at 15 seats, doesn’t stand to benefit from soldiers’ votes – most of the ballots cast in double- sealed envelopes. If a defector from Benny Gantz’s Kahol Lavan goes over and brings the right-wing bloc up to 61 seats, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won’t have problems forming a new government. But if the center-left bloc and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu stand firm, Netanyahu might be asking the Knesset for a vote of confidence with only 60 lawmakers in his camp.

Ynet News Joint List Head Claims 'Huge Success' with Historic 15-Seat Win Joint List chairman Ayman Odeh declared a “huge achievement” in Monday’s elections after nearly final results showed the party had won 15 seats in Knesset, their largest win in any national ballot. “Brothers and sisters, you have created a historic day,” Odeh said in a recorded statement in Arabic. “From the first elections in 1949 until today, we have not received this degree of support and this number of seats.” The near-final results of the elections - the country's third in less than a year - showed that more than 530,000 Israelis voted for the Joint List. In a separate statement to reporters in Hebrew, Odeh said that Joint List received votes from many Jewish voters and contended that it needed to become “the principled alternative for the entire Israeli political map.” 2

Times of Israel IDF General Met with Netanyahu After Visit to Coronavirus-Stricken Italy An Israeli general who was later instructed to enter self-quarantine following a visit to Italy met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials last week. The Israel Defense Forces confirmed that the officer, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, the head of the IDF Operations Directorate, returned to Israel some 12 days ago from a personal trip to Italy, which has seen a high incidence of the COVID-19 disease. On February 23, he took part in a high-level security consultation with Netanyahu, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, IDF chief Aviv Kohavi and other senior security officials during Israel’s two-day battle with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, as seen in a video of the meeting, distributed by the Defense Ministry.

Jerusalem Post Health Ministry Denies Israel to Quarantine American Tourists The Health Ministry denied claims by one of its consultants that Israel is considering quarantining visitors from the United States. “It is not currently on the agenda,” a spokesperson for the ministry told The Jerusalem Post. His statements came after a consultant with the ministry told Kan radio Tuesday that the country is considering putting all American citizens who travel to Israel under 14-day quarantine. In the interview, Dr. Tal Brosh, head of the infectious disease unit at Assuta Ashdod and member of a Health Ministry committee that evaluates the coronavirus threat, said that such a quarantine is “under discussion, of course”,“I would recommend it, but let’s complete the discussions first.” See also, “U.S. Will Drop Limits on Virus Testing, Pence Says” (New York Times)

Reuters UN's Nuclear Chief to Iran: Cooperate or Face New Crisis Iran risks triggering a new crisis if it does not cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog after failing to answer its questions about past nuclear activities at three sites and denying it access to two of them, its chief said on Tuesday. Rafael Grossi, who took up his post in December, spoke to Reuters in an interview hours after he and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) he heads released a report admonishing Iran. "We have been requesting some information and access from Iran but we haven't been getting the information we require," he said. "We have insisted and despite all our efforts we have not been able to get that, so the situation requires on my part such a step because what this means is that Iran is curtailing the ability of the agency to do its work." See also, “UN Nuclear Watchdog Plans Alert on Iranian Stonewalling, Diplomatic Sources Say” (Ha’aretz)

Ynet News Pro-Palestinian LGBT+ Artists Boycott Tel Aviv Film Festival More than 130 gay and trans filmmakers have pledged to boycott an LGBT+ film festival in Tel Aviv, the latest move in a bitter row between Israel and international pro-Palestinian activists. Turner Prize- winning British artist Charlotte Prodger and French film director Alain Guiraudie are among those boycotting the Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival, which is funded by the Culture Ministry and was to open on Wednesday. "Our liberation is intimately connected to the liberation of all oppressed peoples and communities," Queer Cinema for Palestine, a group of pro-Palestinian filmmakers behind the boycott campaign, said on its website. "We stand in solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom, justice, and dignity."Itai Pinkas, a Tel Aviv city council member responsible for LGBT+ issues, said the boycott was misplaced. 3

Ha’aretz – March 4, 2020 ‘An Earthquake’: How Israel’s Arabs Achieved Their Historic Election Win

By Judy Maltz, commentator at Ha’aretz

• With more than 90 percent of the vote counted after Monday’s election, the country’s Arab citizens have good reason to celebrate. As it stands, the Joint List (an alliance of four Arab-led parties) will have 15 seats in the next Knesset, two more than it had in the last government. • As a result, 17 Arabs – an all-time record – are set to serve in the 23rd Knesset: 14 Joint List lawmakers (the Hadash faction has one Jewish member, Ofer Cassif), along with three lawmakers representing Jewish parties. Likud, Kahol Lavan and Yisrael Beiteinu each have one member of the Arabic-speaking Druze minority on their tickets. • The number of Arab women serving in the Knesset also looks set to break records. The Joint List has four women in its top 15 spots, more than most Jewish parties, and Kahol Lavan has one female Druze lawmaker (Gadeer Mreeh). Occupying 15th spot on the Joint List slate is Iman Khatib, a representative of the Islamist United Arab List, who will be the first hijab-wearing woman ever to serve in the Knesset. • Two key factors explain the big gains posted by the Joint List on Monday: a dramatic increase in voter turnout within the Arab community; and plummeting support for Jewish parties among Arab voters. • According to preliminary estimates, nearly 65 percent of the electorate in Arab towns and cities (this figure does not include mixed Arab-Jewish towns, where it is harder to break down the vote) voted in Monday’s election – the third in less than a year. This compared with about 49 percent last April and 59 percent last September. The turnout was the highest among Arab voters since 1999. • The four factions of the Joint List – which includes an eclectic mix of communists, religious Islamists, secularists and Palestinian nationalists – ran under two separate tickets last April. Together, these two slates won 71 percent of the total Arab vote. A disproportionate share of the rest went to the left-wing/Zionist Meretz party, which had two Arab candidates in its top five spots. In September, reunited as the Joint List, the same four factions won 81 percent of the Arab vote. • According to Israel Democracy Institute researcher Arik Rudnitzky, an expert on Arab society in Israel, the Joint List fared even better on Monday, capturing 88 percent of the Arab vote. “There was a general consensus in this election that if you’re Arab, the only way to vote is for the Joint List,” he says. • Thabet Abu Rass – co-director of the Abraham Initiatives, a nonprofit that promotes a shared society for Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens – describes what transpired in Arab society on Monday as nothing less than “an earthquake.” “Arab citizens have shown that they want to be involved in Israeli society and they want to be able to affect change,” he says. “You can say that this time they definitely came out in droves,” Abu Rass adds – alluding to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s infamous attempt to rally his base on Election Day in 2015 by warning that Arab citizens were voting “in droves.” 4

• Netanyahu’s ongoing attacks on Arab citizens and their political leaders were seen as a major contributor to the community’s increased turnout last September.What brought even more voters out this time, Rudnitzky says, were deep concerns about U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called “deal of the century.” Trump’s peace plan, unveiled at the end of January, sparked anxiety among Israel’s Arab citizens when it raised the possibility that they could be stripped of their Israeli citizenship as part of a land swap with the Palestinians. That population transfer would include a cluster of 10 Arab towns and cities known as “The Triangle,” where an estimated 350,000 Arab citizens live and where, according to Abu Rass, voter turnout was especially high on Monday. • Last September, the centrist Kahol Lavan – one of the two largest parties in Israel – won an entire seat from Arab voters thanks to a successful outreach campaign. According to Rudnitzky, the party performed much worse on Monday, with its votes in Arab areas dropping from about 39,000 to around 26,000. • Abu Rass says Kahol Lavan leader Benny Gantz was to blame for those lost votes. “The fact that Gantz said he didn’t want any support from the Joint List, after it had recommended him as prime minister [in September], was a humiliating blow to many Arab citizens,” he explains. “Many who voted for Kahol Lavan in September moved to the Joint List this time.” • Arab voters had saved Meretz from virtual extinction last April. Without Arab votes, the party would not have crossed the 3.25 percent electoral threshold. Support for Meretz was especially strong in the Triangle town of Kafr Qasem, home to its lawmaker Esawi Freige. In April, Meretz won 39 percent of the vote in Kafr Qasem – more than any other party. But then it merged with two other factions to form the Democratic Union and Freige failed to make it into the 22nd Knesset in September, when the Democratic Union won less than 26 percent of the vote in Kafr Qasem. • The Democratic Union then split up and Meretz subsequently merged with Labor-Gesher. As part of this new merger, Freige was bumped even further down the slate, with virtually no chance of getting into the new Knesset. • Voters in Kafr Qasem took their revenge on Monday: The Labor-Gesher-Meretz ticket won barely 7 percent of the vote. The main beneficiary of this flight from Meretz was the Joint List, which won 91.5 percent of the vote in Kafr Qasem. According to Rudnitzky, Labor-Gesher and Meretz lost half of their votes in Arab cities and towns between September and March.“Interestingly,” he says, “the only Jewish party that managed to hold onto votes in the Arab community, and even win a bit more this time, was Likud, which went up from 8,000 to 8,800 votes.” • Abu Rass says the Joint List also received a major and unprecedented boost from local government leaders in the recent campaign. “Mayors of Arab towns and cities usually try to remain neutral during national elections, because they need to stay on the good side of the establishment,” he relays. “This was the first time we have seen Arab mayors actually come out and call on residents to vote for the Arab parties. And it worked.” • Also key to the Joint List’s success, in his view, was the fact that women were given prominent places on the ticket, which served as an incentive for Arab women to come out and vote. As well as Khatib in 15th spot, another woman who had never served in the Knesset was just above her: Sondos Saleh, from the secular Ta’al faction. They will join Aida Touma-Sliman from Hadash, 5

who previously served as chair of the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality – the first Arab woman ever to hold this position – and Heba Yazbak from the nationalist Balad faction, who was elected for the first time in September. • The Joint List also enjoyed unprecedented support from left-wing Jewish voters – most of them disillusioned Meretz supporters. These voters were unhappy with what they perceived as Meretz’s lurch to the right (Gesher leader Orli Levi-Abekasis previously served in Avigdor Lieberman’s right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party), and the fact it had no Arab candidate in a safe spot on its slate. According to preliminary estimates, the number of votes the Joint List received from Jewish voters – primarily in Tel Aviv and Haifa – doubled between September and March.

Summary: Abu Rass says the Joint List also received a major and unprecedented boost from local government leaders in the recent campaign. “Mayors of Arab towns and cities usually try to remain neutral during national elections, because they need to stay on the good side of the establishment,” he relays. “This was the first time we have seen Arab mayors actually

come out and call on residents to vote for the Arab parties. And it worked.” Also key to the Joint List’s success, in his view, was the fact that women were given prominent places on the ticket, which served as an incentive for Arab women to come out and vote. As well as Khatib in 15th spot, another woman who had never served in the Knesset was just above her: Sondos Saleh, from the secular Ta’al faction. They will join Aida Touma-Sliman from Hadash, who previously served as chair of the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality – the first Arab woman ever to hold this position – and Heba Yazbak

from the nationalist Balad faction, who was elected for the first time in September.

Israel Hayom – March 4 2020 The Losers’ Virtual Reality

By Amnon Lord, political commentator at Israel Hayom

• Let’s revisit a proposal from the past: what might happen if instead of airing ideas about how each individual MK might trip up the winning bloc, the opposite were to happen? Something in keeping with the American tradition: the various forces should first recognize the electoral victory that the Israeli public handed to the right-wing bloc. Then, the people who are involved up to their eyebrows in Israeli politics might ask Prime Minister Netanyahu how they might help him. After all, that is democracy, and the public gave a sweeping vote of confidence to Netanyahu as the leader of the right-wing bloc. • The problem is that there is a coalition that doesn’t care about what the people want. They’re acting as if the elections hadn’t been held and they are already busy trying to erase their outcome. That coalition is comprised of the High Court of Justice, the Sayeret Matkal veterans with their letter that they addressed to the court, the arrogant and condescending performance that has been put on by Eliad Shraga and his cohorts on behalf of the president. They aren’t accountable to the public, only to the sole sources of authority and sovereignty on earth, the Supreme Court, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit and Knesset Legal Adviser Eyal Yinon. • The first person who ought to offer his assistance to the prime minister who has just received the renewed confidence of the public is the man who created Israel’s democratic imbroglio, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit. Why didn’t he tender his resignation to the prime minister yesterday? That is the self-evident decision he needs to make after the public en masse accepted that the indictments against Netanyahu are based on a crime that isn’t in the law book, and which no country in the world has ever prosecuted anyone for committing. Another reason for Mandelblit to resign: the hasty manner in which he filed the indictments on the day of the prime minister’s historic meeting with President Trump, while the prime minister was still overseas. That was terribly flawed. The same applies to the decision and the announcement in the middle of the run-up to elections about the date on which the trial is to begin. All of that reeks of political malice. • Alongside the tremendous success of the right-wing bloc, the Likud and Netanyahu, comes the bad news. The Joint Arab List and Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu together have created a bloc that neutralizes the possibility of forming a coalition out of the 120 MKs. One side of that bloc is guided by sense of Palestinian national responsibility, while the other is guided by a lack of Israeli national responsibility. The coalition of Odeh, Tibi and Liberman. Liberman has camouflaged that by dictating ridiculous terms to the big victor, Binyamin Netanyahu. He is demanding that the government not only exclude the Haredim and the religious, but that it exclude Netanyahu himself. • The gap between the right-wing bloc an the left-wing bloc is 20 seats. Currently, it is 59 against 39. The gap has never been that big. The source of Israel’s political and legal systems’ problems is the sterile attempt to ignore the simple facts. In Israeli society as it is, the Gantz- Lapid party and certainly Liberman too ought to know how to do the math and to recognize reality for what it is. Some people drew a comparison between the anti-Semitic propaganda attacks by Liberman and the propaganda that was used in the past by the late Tommy Lapid.

That comparison does an injustice to Tommy Lapid who knew, despite his opposition to Haredi dictates, that he lived in a Jewish country and he was capable of keeping the national interest in view through the smokescreen of his slogans. • The person who should have stepped forward with a pragmatic and helpful proposal is Benny Gantz. As a general, he ought to be able to take in the lay of the entire battlefield with a single panoramic view. Yesterday morning Nachman Shai was interviewed on Kan Radio from Atlanta. He said that the only glue holding the members of Blue and White together is their opposition to Bibi, and that they don’t know how to engage in politics or, in other words, how to communicate with the voters, which is something that their rivals know how to do quite well. Netanyahu’s dominance in the elections and in communication with the masses also keenly reflects his strategic capabilities and his tremendous abilities in the diplomatic and international arena. All that Benny Gantz had to say about that was his disrespectful comment about Bibi’s excellent English, which betrayed more than a bit of jealousy. The leaders of Blue and White lack the cultural sophistication and the background that allow leaders to operate politically and publicly. The worrisome question is how has the IDF systematically produced an elite that is lacking in general knowledge and which simply isn’t good enough for the international arena. • Gantz has not responded swiftly to the new and clear situation that has evolved. One can only imagine what might have happened had he been prime minister at the current juncture in time, with the eruption of the coronavirus pandemic. Liberman may not have noticed, but Litzman, with his beard and black caftan, operated quickly, decisively and professionally in response to the outbreak of the epidemic, and we can only be grateful that the doctor whom Liberman proposed as a candidate for health minister wasn’t there instead of him. It’s a good thing that Gantz missed his opportunity in September 2019. He will never be prime minister now.

Summary: The person who should have stepped forward with a pragmatic and helpful proposal is Benny Gantz. As a general, he ought to be able to take in the lay of the entire battlefield with a single panoramic view. Yesterday morning Nachman Shai was interviewed on Kan Radio from Atlanta. He said that the only glue holding the members of Blue and White together is their opposition to Bibi, and that they don’t know how to engage in politics or, in other words, how to communicate with the voters, which is something that their rivals know how to do quite well. Netanyahu’s dominance in the elections and in communication with the masses also keenly reflects his strategic capabilities and his tremendous abilities in the diplomatic and international arena. All that Benny Gantz had to say about that was his disrespectful comment about Bibi’s excellent English, which betrayed more than a bit of jealousy. The leaders of Blue and White lack the cultural sophistication and the background that allow leaders to operate politically and publicly. The worrisome question is how has the IDF systematically produced an elite that is lacking in general knowledge and which simply isn’t good enough for the international arena.