Israel and the Middle East News Update

Friday, December 7

Headlines:

• IDF: We Found Another Hezbollah Tunnel Crossing into • Lebanon Condemns Israel’s Warnings to its Civilians • Resolution Condemning Hamas Fails at UN, Despite Vast Support • Trump to Replace Haley at UN with Heather Nauert • US Blocks $500 Million Arms Deal Between Israel, Croatia: Report • Push For Anti-BDS Bill Exposes Rift Among Jewish Progressives • Palestinians Plant 15 Million Trees to Seize Land • Sara Netanyahu to Be Questioned on Suspicion of Fraud Today

Commentary:

• Times of Israel: “Annexation – At What Cost?” - By David A. Halperin, executive director of the Israel Policy Forum • Ha’aretz: “'Nasrallah Knows Israel's DNA – and Planned to Shock Us With Hezbollah Attack Tunnels'” - By Amos Harel, military commentator at Ha’aretz

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 December 7, 2018 Ha’aretz IDF: We Found Another Hezbollah Tunnel Crossing Into Israel The Israeli military said Thursday afternoon that it has discovered another tunnel dug by the terror organization Hezbollah and has asked the United Nations to help efforts to destroy it. The commander of the Israeli army's Northern Command, Maj. Gen. Yoel Strick, asked the commander of United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), Maj. Gen. Stefano Del Col, on Thursday to assist in neutralizing an attack tunnel being dug from Lebanon into Israeli territory. According to an Israeli army statement, Strick demanded UNIFIL reach the tunnel from the Lebanese side of the border, "and noted that whoever enters the underground perimeter endangers his life." The tunnel, which is being dug from the village of Ramyeh crossed into Israel, but does not pose an immediate threat to residents, the statement said. See also, “IDF to UNIFIL: Neutralize additional Hezbollah tunnel” ( News)

Times of Israel Lebanon Condemns Israel’s Warnings to its Civilians Lebanon’s ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday accused Israel of hacking into the country’s telephone network to warn southern Lebanese citizens of imminent Israeli military activity on the border, in what was described by Beirut as “extremely serious acts.” Amal Mudallali’s letter to the UNSC came days after Israel launched Operation Northern Shield to dismantle attack tunnels it says were dug by the Hezbollah terror group. “Lebanon condemns in the the political and diplomatic campaign being waged by Israel against Lebanon, which it fears is a prelude to the launch of further attacks,” she wrote. See also, “UN force confirms presence of tunnel on Lebanon-Israel border” (Aljazeera)

Times of Israel Resolution Condemning Hamas Fails at UN, Despite Vast Support The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday failed to pass a resolution condemning Hamas, serving a crushing defeat to Israel and its American ally after weeks of diplomacy. While the US-backed draft resolution got a comfortable majority of votes, it fell short of the two-thirds super-majority needed to pass. Eighty-seven countries voted in favor of the resolution, while 57 opposed it. Thirty-three countries abstained and another 23 were not present. “Today we achieved a plurality which would have been a majority if the vote had not been hijacked by a political move of procedure,” Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said. See also, “UN rejects first attempt to condemn Hamas” (CNN)

Jerusalem Post Trump to Replace Haley at UN with Heather Nauert US President Donald Trump will replace Nikki Haley, who resigned in October as UN envoy, with State Department spokesman Heather Nauert, a political novice, according to a senior administration official. The appointment of Nauert has been anticipated for weeks. Before joining the Trump administration in her inaugural role in public service, Nauert worked as a Fox News anchor, gaining Trump’s attention. She has since impressed the State Department for her professionalism and rapid education on a host of foreign policy matters. Nauert is expected to follow in the footsteps of Haley, who convinced Trump to elevate the UN ambassador position to a cabinet-level role.

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I24 News US Blocks $500 Million Arms Deal Between Israel, Croatia: Report The United States is blocking an arms deal that would see 12 U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets being sold from Israel to Croatia, Axios reported on Thursday.The $500 million deal infuriated Washington which warned three weeks ago that the deal would be blocked because it had not been approved by the US before signed, Israeli officials told Axios.The officials also said that Israeli Prime Minister discussed the issue with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier this week in Brussels. Pompeo reportedly said US Secretary of Defense James Mattis was the one blocking the deal. Washington accused Jerusalem of selling the F-16 fighter jets equipped with new and sophisticated Israeli made electronic systems, so as to give at an edge compared to US made fighter jets. See also, “TRUMP TRIES TO BLOCK LAW to COMPENSATE AMERICAN VICTIMS OF PA TERRORISM” (JPost)

TOI Push For Anti-BDS Bill Exposes Rift Among Jewish Progressives With a US senator attempting to push controversial legislation cracking down on anti-Israel boycotts through Congress, progressive Jewish groups appear split on the merits of the proposed law. While the liberal Middle East advocacy group J Street has vehemently opposed the bill, which would make it illegal to boycott Israel, the Jewish Democratic Council of America, an advocacy wing for more mainline Jewish Democrats, is supporting its passage. The bill — called the Israel Anti-Boycott Act — would prohibit American companies from participating in Israel boycotts, including those promoted by international organizations like the United Nations. It was castigated by liberal advocacy groups and civil society groups almost immediately upon its release on First Amendment grounds.

Ynet News Palestinians Plant 15 Million Trees to Seize Land The Palestinian Authority (PA) has planted millions of olive trees in the West Bank in a ploy to lay claim to land and set facts on the ground, according to an internal report by the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA). According to the report, which was written by the head of the Agriculture Department in the ICA and brought to light by the Zionist civil rights Lavi organization, the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture has implemented a plan to take over land by planting olive trees. "According to data collected by the Palestinian ministry, the space on which the trees were planted amounts to some 975,000 dunams (241,000 acres) on which 14.7 million olive trees have been planted, 11.9 million of which bear fruit," the report said. COGAT: Report based on Palestinian data, we haven't verified it.

Ha’aretz Sara Netanyahu to Be Questioned on Suspicion of Fraud Today Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wife, Sara, is expected to be questioned under caution by the police on Friday on suspicion of fraudulently deceiving the state comptroller over the employment terms of the family's former media adviser Nir Hefetz. The case was investigated as an appendix to the Bezeq-Walla bribery case, following the testimony of state's witness and the Netanyahus' former spokesman Nir Hefetz. Attorney Dan Shimron, who was also involved in the case, is expected to testify to the police at the same time. The case started with the prime minister's request to the state comptroller, as Haaretz had reported, to arrange Hefetz's employment as the family's spokesman, after he had refused to be paid for his services.

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Times of Israel – December 6, 2018 Annexation – At What Cost?

By David A. Halperin, executive director of the Israel Policy Forum

• Some bad ideas refuse to stay down. Last week Israeli Justice Minister and Jewish Home member Ayelet Shaked breathed new life into one such misguided proposal. Speaking to journalists in Jerusalem, Shaked put forth her recommendation for annexing Area C of the West Bank to Israel and siphoning off the rest of the territory in a confederation with Jordan and Gaza. She even made the bizarre suggestion that the Palestinians might accept such an arrangement sometime in the future, a comment that could only have been informed by detachment from reality or unapologetic dishonesty. • Shaked’s talking points are a reflection of the deceptively named “stability plan” marketed since 2012 by her party’s leader, Education and Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett, which focuses on absorption of Area C by Israel. Of course, this would produce anything but stability. • Bennett’s proposal, which Shaked parroted, plays up the demography of the West Bank while ignoring geography. To wit, there is no such thing as “partial annexation,” despite what Jewish Home might say. While it is true, as pro-annexation pundits like to point out, that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians live in Areas A and B (now under Palestinian Authority administration), they fail to note that those sections of the West Bank constitute a disconnected archipelago of territorial enclaves. Merging Area C – 60 percent of West Bank land – with Israel would leave 169 foreign islands in a sea of Israeli territory, each one with its own border which Israel would have to secure. Without the PA, and as these boundaries prove difficult to secure, Areas A and B are liable to fall under effective Israeli control too. • The Palestinian Authority cannot survive Israel’s annexation of Area C, as this definitively closes the door on a future two-state solution. Perhaps that’s Bennett and Shaked’s intention. Whatever the case, they owe it to the Israeli public, as well as to Israel’s patrons in Washington, to come clean about the costs of the PA’s collapse that will follow Israeli annexation of the majority of the West Bank. Covering for public services currently handled by the PA means Israel footing a $2.35 billion bill annually, though the total could be as much as $14.9 billion as Israel is compelled to fill the vacuum left by the Palestinian Authority in other parts of the West Bank. Whereas international donors have helped support humanitarian assistance and institution- building in support of a two-state solution, Israel can expect little sympathy or help from the rest of the world if it deviates so sharply from a mutual territorial compromise. • This doesn’t even begin to touch security. When the PA folds, it will leave Israel without a reliable counterterrorist partner in the Palestinian Territories, leaving the IDF as the police arm of an undemocratic regime across all of the West Bank in perpetuity, including in Palestinian cities. The United States has long financed the Palestinian Authority Security Forces, whose professionalization after the represents a rare success story in a conflict often defined by failed initiatives. American aid to the PASF even survived the Trump administration’s punitive cuts to all other kinds of assistance in the West Bank and Gaza. But this was all built on the promise that one day Palestinians would achieve real sovereignty. Annexation would squander a major U.S. investment and endanger Israelis, as former PASF members abandon their mission, or worse, turn their guns against Israel and rival Palestinian factions. 4

• It’s also detrimental to American and Israeli interests for a high-ranking cabinet minister like Ayelet Shaked to be playing fast and loose with the stability of Jordan, an important ally. Jordan renounced claims to the West Bank thirty years ago and has not occupied that area for over half a century. It takes an astounding lack of self-awareness to openly discuss something that would amount to completely reconfiguring the Jordanian state. Imagine the reaction if the U.S. secretary of state proposed dismantling the government of a trusted regional partner. • The Hashemite Kingdom’s relations with Israel are sensitive enough without added pressure. It was just last month that Amman decided not to renew the leases on two small territories loaned to Israel under the 1994 peace treaty, likely a token gesture to an anti-Israel public. • Loose talk of a confederation may force the Jordanian authorities’ hand, compelling them to take a harder line on Israel in order to shore up their standing with the public and avert a collapse. Shaked and Bennett like to admonish audiences about looming threats on Israel’s eastern border, but that frontier is fairly calm, largely thanks to the durability of the Jordanian government. But the so-called “stability plan” could invite the very instability annexationists warn of. Of course, there are alternatives. Earlier this year, PA President Mahmoud Abbas even expressed cautious acceptance of a loose confederation but only in the context of a two-state solution that provides for an independent Palestine, not as a means of circumventing it — though, notably, Jordan remains cool to the idea. • Despite rhetorical gymnastics from the Israeli right about partial annexation, there are really only two conclusions for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Annexation will formalize a one state arrangement — undemocratic and hobbled by an intractable occupation, with all the attendant costs. Two states would extricate Israel from this dilemma, allowing it to retain its Jewish and democratic character and reach sustainable security understandings with its neighbors. Without advocating steps to preserve the latter outcome, unscrupulous politicians will continue to pedal half-baked ideas like the “stability plan.” • Ayelet Shaked, Naftali Bennett and those who think like them are right to worry about Israel’s security. However, in circulating annexation plans they gloss over (or worse, deliberately hide) the likely ramifications of their proposals, which threaten to erode Israelis’ safety, undermine the state’s economy, and undo its democracy while also imperiling relationships with important U.S. allies in the Arab world. What nationalist or religious aspiration could justify so enormous a cost?

SUMMARY: Ayelet Shaked, Naftali Bennett and those who think like them are right to worry about Israel’s security. However, in circulating annexation plans they gloss over (or worse, deliberately hide) the likely ramifications of their proposals, which threaten to erode Israelis’ safety, undermine the state’s economy, and undo its democracy while also imperiling relationships with important U.S. allies in the Arab world. What nationalist or religious aspiration could justify so enormous a cost?

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Ha’aretz – December 7, 2018 'Nasrallah Knows Israel's DNA – and Planned to Shock Us With Hezbollah Attack Tunnels'

By Amos Harel, military commentator at Ha’aretz

• Three days after the exposure of the attack tunnels that Hezbollah dug into Israeli territory under the Lebanon border, the significance of the discovery is becoming clearer. After the criticism of the IDF media blitz and the political leveraging by Prime Minister Netanyahu, it’s best not to lose sight of the military implications of the events. After years of searching, the army located a vital component of Hezbollah’s offensive plans in the north. • If the confidence that the intelligence community is expressing in its information proves to be well-founded, Israel is hoping to deprive the enemy of an important capability upon which a portion of its preparations for a future war relied. (This war is not erupting yet because at present is still does not serve the interests of either side.) Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal and its attempt to upgrade their level of precision are still its top priority, but the tunnels were also a critical aspect of its program. • When Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah first began issuing threats about his organization’s intention “to conquer the Galilee” in the next war, Israel was initially dismissive. But after Nasrallah kept saying the same thing in public, Israel’s military intelligence seriously set about trying to decipher his meaning. • Why would Nasrallah boast in this way when the most his organization could hope to do was send a few cells of attackers across the border for a surprise attack on a single community? Even Hezbollah couldn’t turn a few rocket barrages on the Israeli home front into a victory photo. The answer gradually became clear only after the 2014 . Israel realized that Hezbollah was aiming to copy the Hamas model of attack tunnels, in a slightly different form. • The tunnels it dug, which apparently were fewer in number and shorter, were designed to meet the specific needs of the northern front: the quick and secret transfer of hundreds of fighters from the outskirts of the villages in southern Lebanon into Israel, thus to lay the groundwork for a wider ground offensive that would immediately follow. • The balance of power between the sides is clear. Hezbollah, with no air force, would not be able to maintain any strongholds it seizes in the Galilee for long, but the shock that such a surprise attack would have on the Israeli public would be enough to give Hezbollah an image of victory, and all the Israeli air strikes and ground incursions that would ensue inside Lebanon would not erase this impression. • Nasrallah understands Israeli society’s DNA very well, as a member of the IDF general staff said the other day. The tunnel plan was directed precisely at this. “This was the cornerstone of Hezbollah’s approach, a move that was supposed to take us by surprise without us knowing what hit us.” Asked how critical this operation was at this time, given the criticism in the media and the questions that have arisen in the political arena, his response was unexpectedly forceful: Had war broken out and we had left this threat untreated, the Agranat Commission’s criticisms of the IDF following the Yom Kippur War would have paled in

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comparison to what would have happened in this case, and rightly so. “We could not go on living with this threat for one day. And this is a genuine answer, not covering our ass.” • The effort to locate the tunnels, which was coordinated by army intelligence and the IDF Northern Command with the aid of technology and engineering units, covered a very extensive area along 130 kilometers of the border fence. It was some time before a breakthrough was achieved. The teams of experts identified methods of operation and looked for unusual characteristics. At the same time, the area was analyzed from what would be Hezbollah’s vantage point: Which roads and sites are vital to Israel and where are the vulnerable spots that would allow access to them? • The IDF spent many months searching before it found the tunnel next to Metula, whose entry shaft on the Lebanese side was dug beneath a cement block factory in Kafr Kila. When the army noticed that the factory was not receiving materials but just transporting cargo from the site on trucks, it realized what was really going on there. By the summer, conditions were ripe to launch an engineering operation. Brig. Gen. Dror Shalom, head of Military Intelligence’s research department, felt that more information was still needed to have the most accurate intelligence and be certain that the tunnels would be found. Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, MI chief Tamir Heyman and Northern Command head Yoel Strick felt it was time to act. • Eisenkot permitted Shalom to present his minority position to the cabinet as well. Meanwhile, a debate arose over which action was more important. Avigdor Lieberman, who was still defense minister, felt that the threat in the north was not as urgent as the ongoing escalation in the south. Lieberman also suspected that Eisenkot was using the need for an operation in the north as an excuse to justify avoiding an operation against Hamas in Gaza. • When Eisenkot became chief of staff in February 2015, he cited the removal of enemy tunnels into Israel as a top priority. The trauma of the tunnels in Operation Protective Edge was still fresh and the defense establishment had begun a major project (budgeted at close to 4 billion shekels, or just over $1 billion) to build the tunnel barrier wall and develop technology to locate the tunnels. In early 2017, credible information about tunnels on the Lebanon border began to accumulate as well. Eisenkot pushed to advance the move. We can’t repeat the mistake of hoping that the tunnels will grow rusty like the rockets, he told his people, alluding to former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon’s controversial statement prior to the Second Lebanon War. • But more time passed until the army had solid and sufficiently detailed information on the northern tunnels, and other challenges popped up in the interim. Israel began a campaign to strike Iranian targets in Syria with the aim of halting the entrenchment of the Revolutionary Guards and the Shi’ite militias there. In the summer of 2018, with the tension rising over the incendiary kites and balloons on the Gazan border, the northern operation was postponed once more, though Eisenkot insisted that it not be put off as late as winter. It would be negligent not to start dealing with the tunnels in the north, he argued. • In September, the planned operation was presented to Netanyahu and then, on November 7, to the cabinet. In the cabinet discussion, Lieberman said again that the threat was less urgent than portrayed by the army and that the most necessary move at this time was a ground incursion against Hamas in Gaza.

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• During the interlude, in October, Eisenkot traveled to the United States and presented the tunnel threat to the American administration for the first time. Netanyahu also discussed it early in the week at his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Brussels. The prime minister had many topics to discuss with Pompeo. The operation to locate the tunnels was first on the list. • So what will Hezbollah do now? The defense establishment is somewhat surprised by the relative quiet with which the Israeli action along the northern border was received in Lebanon this week. The sense is that Hezbollah genuinely did not anticipate the Israeli move and is still assessing the impact of its lost military assets that were exposed. However, Nasrallah is unlikely to let Israeli propaganda go unchecked for very long. For now, a military escalation does not seem to be in the offing. And yet, the continued efforts to locate the tunnels will generate tension on both sides of the border, with an even more challenging problem for Israel lurking just around the corner: the Iranian effort to build production lines in Lebanon for systems that will improve the precision of Hezbollah’s rockets. • Netanyahu and other Israeli spokespeople have stated again and again that Israel will not allow such factories to be built. The fuse that could ignite the next war has already been shown to us. At the same time, many voices are still pressing for restraint. But all signs indicate that 2019 is going to be extra tense on the security front, regardless of when the next Israeli elections are held.

SUMMARY: Nasrallah understands Israeli society’s DNA very well, as a member of the IDF general staff said the other day. The tunnel plan was directed precisely at this. “This was the cornerstone of Hezbollah’s approach, a move that was supposed to take us by surprise without us knowing what hit us.” Asked how critical this operation was at this time, given the criticism in the media and the questions that have arisen in the political arena, his response was unexpectedly forceful: Had war broken out and we had left this threat untreated, the Agranat Commission’s criticisms of the IDF following the Yom Kippur War would have paled in comparison to what would have happened in this case, and rightly so. “We could not go on living with this threat for one day. And this is a genuine answer, not covering our ass.”

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