Israel and the Middle East News Update

Wednesday, February 5

Headlines:

• Draft U.N. Resolution Condemns Israeli Annexation in Trump Peace Plan • Netanyahu Suggests He’ll Move Annexation Forward Only After Elections • Officials: Hamas Encouraging Attacks to Pressure Israel Before Election • Liberman Ditches Prospects of Unity Government • Knesset Panel Approves Immunity Bid by Senior Likud Lawmaker • 3 arrested in Clashes with IDF as Tents Removed From Illegal Outpost • 14 Israelis Among Passengers Quarantined on Cruise Ship Off Japan • Israeli Lawmaker Donates Kidney to a Stranger

Commentary:

• Ha’aretz: “Four Weeks From Israeli Election, Even Netanyahu’s Political Stunts Can’t Rouse Voters” - By Anshel Pfeffer, commentator at Ha’aretz • Al Monitor: “Trump’s 'Peace Plan' Rewards Settler Violence” - By Akiva Eldar, contributor to Al Monitor

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 February 5, 2020 Reuters Draft U.N. Resolution Condemns Israeli Annexation in Trump Peace Plan A draft United Nations Security Council resolution on Tuesday condemned an Israeli plan to annex its settlements in the West Bank in a rebuke of President Donald Trump’s pro-Israel peace proposal. The draft text, circulated to council members by Tunisia and Indonesia, would seemingly face a U.S. veto, but nonetheless offered some members’ dim view of the peace plan that Trump rolled out last week with great fanfare. Diplomats said negotiations on the text would likely begin later this week. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to speak to the council next week about the plan, possibly coinciding with a vote on the draft resolution. See also, “Guterres: UN safeguards international law in Mideast “ (France 24)

Times of Israel Netanyahu Suggests He’ll Move Annexation Forward Only After Elections PM Netanyahu on Tuesday suggested that he would advance applying Israeli sovereignty to parts of the West Bank only after the March 2 elections. At a campaign event in Beit Shemesh, Netanyahu urged attendees to help him get elected in the upcoming national vote, saying that a victory would allow his Likud party to gain approval for the Trump administration peace plan. The remarks were at odds with Netanyahu’s earlier vow to annex territory immediately following the plan’s release on January 28. The idea of immediate Israeli annexation was opposed by President Donald Trump’s envoy Jared Kushner. See also, “Netanyahu Says Cabinet Will Vote on Settlement Annexation Only After Israel's Election” (Haaretz)

Ha’aretz Officials: Hamas Encouraging Attacks to Pressure Israel Before Election An uptick in cross-border rocket fire and launch of explosive devices from the Gaza Strip this week has been approved by Hamas, Israeli defense officials believe, in an attempt to pressure Israel before its March 2 election. According to defense officials, the Gaza-based group believes the Israeli leadership has not been implementing steps recently agreed through international mediators, including the promotion of infrastructure projects in the Gaza Strip and the reestablishment of the joint industrial zone at the Karni crossing, at the required pace. Hamas has told Israel it expected the deal to go ahead regardless of the political difficulties facing Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Bennett. See also, “Hamas calls for confrontation to thwart 'Deal of the Century' “ (Arutz 7)

Ynet News Liberman Ditches Prospects of Unity Government Yisrael Beyetenu Chairman Avigdor Liberman said on Tuesday the next government will not be a unity government, but a Zionist and liberal government. "I know there won't be a unity government, but a Zionist and liberal government," Liberman said in an interview at the Ynet studio. "The public wants a government and prefers a Zionist and liberal one - and that's what needs to be done." After Israel's last round of elections in September ended in a stalemate, Liberman insisted he would only join a unity government consisting of his Yisrael Beytenu party, alongside the country's two major parties, Likud and Blue & White, who were both unable to establish a viable majority government due to an ongoing political impasse.

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Ha’aretz Knesset Panel Approves Immunity Bid by Senior Likud Lawmaker The Knesset House Committee on Tuesday voted to approve MK Haim Katz’s request for parliamentary immunity from prosecution, and the request will now go to the full Knesset for a vote. The Likud MK is accused of fraud and breach of trust for promoting a 2010 bill that would have benefitted him, and because he allegedly misled both the Knesset Labor, Welfare and Health Committee, which he chaired at the time, as well as the Ethics Committee about his possible conflict of interest. Sixteen committee members voted in favor of immunity, among them MK Zvi Hauser of Kahol Lavan. Ten members voted against, and four abstained. MK Gideon Sa’ar, number 5 on the Likud slate, left the room for the vote and was replaced. See also, “Knesset c'ttee approves Haim Katz immunity” (Globes)

Times of Israel 3 arrested in Clashes with IDF as Tents Removed From Illegal Outpost Three people were arrested Wednesday morning during clashes as security forces removed two tents at an illegal outpost near the Kochav Hashahar settlement in the central West Bank. Dozens of protesters confronted Border Police and civil administration officials — the Defense Ministry body that authorizes West Bank construction — when they arrived at the Ma’ale Shlomo outpost to take down the tents. The three arrests were made for entering a closed military zone and for attacking security forces, police said in a statement. The detainees were taken away for further questioning by police. See also, “Israeli forces demolish two illegal tents in West Bank settlement” (i24 News)

Ynet News 14 Israelis Among Passengers Quarantined on Cruise Ship Off Japan At least 14 Israelis appear to be on a cruise liner anchored off Japan after health officials confirmed on Wednesday that 10 on the ship had tested positive for coronavirus and more cases were possible. Around 3,700 people are facing at least two weeks locked away on the liner. While the infected patients were transferred by Japan's coast guard to hospitals on the mainland, the remainder of the passengers and crew on board the Carnival Corp ship were placed in quarantine. Israeli passengers quarantined on a cruise ship off the coast of Japan say there is a lot of confusion as the personnel of the cruise line did not make the instructions clear to them. "We do not understand the information the ship's crew are telling us and whether we’re supposed to stay in our cabin for 14 days," said Nicole Ben David, who is with her mother on the ship. See also, “ Coronavirus: cruise ship carrying 3,700 quarantined in Japan after 10 test positive” (Guardian)

Jerusalem Post Israeli Lawmaker Donates Kidney to a Stranger A Knesset lawmaker is recovering in the hospital after donating his kidney to a stranger. Yehiel (Hili) Tropper, 41, of the Blue and White coalition in a widely reported announcement to his friends and supporters on Monday said he had the surgery the day before at Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital. “The surgery went well, and the kidney was transplanted successfully,” Tropper said. “For the next few days, I will stay in the hospital and then I will go home for recovery. I will of course be available for any matter, only a little further away for the upcoming period of time. I hope to get back to things fully soon.” Tropper, a father of four, told Ynet that he will meet the donor next week. The Jerusalem Post reported that Tropper is the first Knesset member to donate a kidney in Israel. The transplant was arranged through Matnat Chaim, a nonprofit organization that works to encourage kidney donations.

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Ha’aretz – February 4, 2020 Four Weeks From Israeli Election, Even Netanyahu’s Political Stunts Can’t Rouse Voters

By Anshel Pfeffer, commentator at Ha’aretz

• Israel’s unprecedented third election in the space of less than a year is also, without a doubt, its sleepiest ever. With just four weeks to go, the campaign is barely registering with the public. Only a small number of billboards have been bought by the parties; candidates have yet to start touring the country; and, even online, the usual barrage of political videos has yet to start. The parties seem to have recognized that Israelis are sick of them and are happy to inflict only the bare minimum of propaganda toward the very end. • Meanwhile, the polls are registering tiny, inconsequential changes from the last election result in September. At this rate, if something doesn’t change by March 2, the deadlock will continue and we’ll have to start preparing for a fourth election ... and then a fifth. • The two men vying to form the next government, Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Kahol Lavan’s Benny Gantz, both need just four or five more Knesset seats for either their parties or political blocs. If just 3 percent of the electorate would move their way, they can block their rival and unlock a path toward building that majority of 61 seats. But with the electoral terrain refusing to shift, where are those votes going to come from? • Both leaders have a polling-based strategy. Netanyahu is convinced there is an unexploited mine of dormant Likudniks who didn’t vote in the last two elections, and all he needs to do is to somehow awaken them and drag them to the polling places. That is why he is trying to engineer as many grandiose spectacles as possible in the final few weeks of the campaign: the Trump peace plan; the annexation of settlements; bringing imprisoned Israeli backpacker Naama Issachar back from Moscow on his plane; a “third country” arrangement with Uganda to deport African asylum seekers from south Tel Aviv. The plan is to throw so much red meat at the base that even the laziest Likudnik will rise from his slumbers on Election Day. • Gantz has been told by his pollsters that the right wing’s more moderate flank is soft and disgruntled with Netanyahu. It is ripe for the plucking: If only these people can be convinced that Kahol Lavan is really a right-wing party in centrist clothing, they will be his. So he will continue to endorse Trump’s peace plan, saying only he can be entrusted to take advantage of the historic opportunity Israel has been granted and to implement it. And he will repeatedly remind voters that Netanyahu will soon be on trial in three separate corruption cases and therefore cannot be expected to function as prime minister – but not because there is anything wrong with Netanyahu’s policies. • Both strategies are based on slim premises, though. The turnout in 2019’s two elections, and that of 2015, all hovered around the 70 percent mark – relatively high for most democracies and, when adjusted for the number of Israelis living abroad, means that over 80 percent of Israelis here routinely vote. Even if Netanyahu is the first politician in history to find a way of motivating that small proportion of chronic nonvoters, there is absolutely no guarantee that they are disproportionately right-leaning.

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• And while Gantz’s strategists are right in identifying a soft-right constituency that would be happy to see Netanyahu depart, they were also there in the previous two elections as well. Many of them have already migrated to Kahol Lavan or Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu. Most of those who still voted Likud or stayed home in 2019’s elections won’t be inclined to suddenly change their view of Gantz and see him as a right-winger just because of a few visits to East Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley. Gantz is a staid and stable figure, not the kind who can undergo a mercurial image transformation. • For now, though, these are the best strategies the two main parties have at their disposal, and they’re doing everything they can to follow them. They are fighting this election on the margins: Netanyahu on the banks of that amorphous stay-at-home reservoir; Gantz on the right-wing fringe of the “Anyone-but-Bibi” camp. Unless there’s a hidden trend the election polls have yet to detect, neither of them appear to be having much success. So, could one of the smaller parties make any difference to the overall picture? At this point, it seems unlikely. For the two parties that enjoyed the biggest change in fortunes last year, just repeating their September performances will be an achievement. • In the space of five months, the predominantly Arab Joint List (which ran as two separate tickets last April) succeeded in boosting turnout in the Arab community by some 10 percentage points, reaching 59.2 percent. That’s high for their base, but still 10 percentage points below the general turnout figure. The Joint List’s leaders are talking of increasing Arab turnout again in March – which would not only mean more seats for the Arab alliance, but also shrinking the right- wing/religious bloc by another seat or two. That could have broader implications, but changing entrenched voting patterns in the relatively apathetic Arab community will still be a tall order. • Yisrael Beiteinu saw its tally grow by 60 percent in September (from five to eight seats) as a result of Lieberman’s decision not to join Netanyahu in government and transforming his party into crusaders of secularism. Yet it will struggle to pull off the same trick again. Lieberman sat on the fence after the last election, not using his potential power to play kingmaker. Now he is claiming he can ensure that a “national liberal” government is finally formed after this election, but why would any new voters choose to believe him? • The other four parties in the running for Knesset seats are focusing on their own core constituencies. (Although 30 parties registered for this election, only eight have a realistic chance of crossing the electoral threshold of 3.25 percent.) United Torah Judaism, Shas and Yamina all have their own religious communities that will come out and vote (although in Yamina’s case, some religious-Zionist voters may not be so pleased with the makeup of the slate and could look elsewhere), but won’t change the overall outcome. • In the case of the new Meretz-Labor-Gesher alliance, it will be interesting to see if any left-leaning voters who previously opted for Kahol Lavan return “home” now that Gantz is breaking rightward. If they do, it may prevent Kahol Lavan from retaining its largest-party status, but won’t change the balance between the two blocs. • It could all change, of course. Perhaps when the campaigning begins in earnest in the final two weeks, voters will wake up and change their minds. They may suddenly realize they’re tired of Netanyahu and go for Gantz. Or they could be reminded that Bibi is, after all, Israel’s one and only master statesman, no matter what awaits him in court.For now, that seems unlikely. Unless something dramatic happens in the next four weeks, this is the election that will change nothing.

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SUMMARY: Meanwhile, the polls are registering tiny, inconsequential changes from the last election result in September. At this rate, if something doesn’t change by March 2, the deadlock will continue and we’ll have to start preparing for a fourth election ... and then a fifth. The two men vying to form the next government, Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Kahol Lavan’s Benny Gantz, both need just four or five more Knesset seats for either their parties or political blocs. If just 3 percent of the electorate would move their way, they can block their rival and unlock a path toward building that majority of 61 seats. But with the electoral terrain refusing to shift, where are those votes going to come from? Both leaders have a polling-based strategy. Netanyahu is convinced there is an unexploited mine of dormant Likudniks who didn’t vote in the last two elections, and all he needs to do is to somehow awaken them and drag them to the polling places. That is why he is trying to engineer as many grandiose spectacles as possible in the final few weeks of the campaign: the Trump peace plan; the annexation of settlements; bringing imprisoned Israeli backpacker Naama Issachar back from Moscow on his plane; a “third country” arrangement with Uganda to deport African asylum seekers from south Tel Aviv. The plan is to throw so much red meat at the base that even the laziest Likudnik will rise from his slumbers on Election Day.

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Al Monitor – February 4 2020 Trump’s 'Peace Plan' Rewards Settler Violence

By Akiva Eldar, contributor to Al Monitor

• As expected, the Palestinians rejected out of hand President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” and obtained the blessings of the Arab League in doing so. The chilly responses to the plan by Russia and the European Union were also foregone conclusions. Trump special adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner was quick to clarify that implementation of the “plan” would be suspended until after the March 2 elections in Israel, but would that really change anything? • The coalition government formed after the elections may not have a majority keen to implement the plan. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “natural partners,” namely, Naftali Bennett and his Yamina party, can’t even hear the word “Palestine.” Meanwhile, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz announced his support for the plan as a basis for negotiations with the Palestinians, but how can one negotiate with a party that was never included in the deal in the first place? To conduct real negotiations to resolve the conflict, an honest broker must be engaged. Anyone who dares claim that Trump is an honest and impartial mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict should prepare for a White House attack of venomous tweets and rightly so. • No other word better describes the US administration’s pro-Israel bias more than “terrorism.” It appears no fewer than 63 times in the 181 pages of the American blueprint posted online, and without exception, each and every time refers to Palestinian terrorism. The need to protect Israel’s citizens from Palestinian terror is the root of the plan. It requires the demilitarization of any future Palestinian state and demands that Hamas and other Palestinian organizations be disarmed, stipulates closer intelligence sharing with neighboring Arab states and, of course, Israeli security control over the entire area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. • No Israeli politician or Palestinian pundit would bet money on the realization of the deal of the century. On the other hand, security officials on both sides believe the plan’s humiliation of the Palestinian leadership and its dominant component, the Fatah movement, will prompt a wave of terrorism in the West Bank and perhaps in Israeli cities as well. In parallel, experience has shown that Jewish terrorists seeking to force the Palestinians out of the “God-given Land of Israel” will • This month marks the 26th anniversary of the massacre of 29 Palestinian worshipers by a Jewish terrorist at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Baruch Goldstein’s spiritual heirs do not lack for weapons or motivation. They even enjoy legitimacy. Netanyahu himself gave the seal of approval to the radical right-wing politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, who counts himself among Goldstein’s admirers, and may even make him a member of the next Cabinet, if chosen to form it • In August 2015, an arson attack in the West Bank village of Duma killed a Palestinian toddler, Ali Dawabshe, and his parents, and severely burned his brother Ahmed, who is still undergoing rehabilitation. Two years before that attack, in May 2013, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, with an eye toward right-wing extremists, had proposed to Netanyahu that people who commit hate crimes be declared members of a terrorist organization. Despite support by Shin Bet and the attorney general for the proposal, Netanyahu decided to make do with declaring them members of an “illicit organization.” What is the government of Israel doing to enforce the law against these so-called illicit organizations and to 7

deter their non-terrorist members? Netanyahu has made due with the authorization he gave in 2012 for the establishment of a special unit within the Israeli police unit on the West Bank tasked with handling nationalist crimes. • The results of the unit's performance are presented in a December 2019 report by the human rights organization Yesh Din, according to which 248 of 273 (91%) investigations launched over the past five years ended without an indictment. Since Yesh Din's founding in 2005, the group has documented some 2,000 acts of violence, threats, property damage, arson, uprooting and other damaging acts to olive trees, vandalism against mosques, illegal takeovers of land and more. The web page “In First Person” provides an abundance of testimony by West Bank residents who witnessed or experienced acts of Jewish terror. The testimonies were compiled by local researchers and by Yesh Din volunteers who visited residents immediately after each event at the crime scene or at the victims’ homes. • The failure to locate the criminals or find sufficient evidence to prosecute them obviously does not reflect the true operational capacity of Israel’s law enforcement agencies — the army, police, Shin Bet and state prosecution — in the West Bank. The failure stems from the climate inspired by the commander in chief, for whom advancing the settlement enterprise takes precedence over the rule of law, especially as regards the “Wild West” laws governing Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. Yesh Din argues that the policy of containing criminal settlers encourages continued violence and expropriation. It severely undermines the Palestinians’ human rights, chief among them the right to life and limb and to property and freedom. • Trump’s “peace plan” would leave 15 settlement enclaves planted in the middle of scattered Palestinian enclaves. As such, the plan constitutes a surefire recipe for the continuation of terror and of theft aimed at the Palestinians, who constantly suffer the violence of settler thugs sanctioned by the Torah and the government. The blessing given by the world’s largest power to the policy of territorial annexation is nothing less than a reward for violence. • A significant part of the lands on which the settlers live was stolen from their helpless Palestinian neighbors, all, of course, with the permission of Israeli authorities, if not their outright encouragement. The map appended to the surrender document that the United States is dictating to the Palestinians perpetuates the points of friction between Palestinian farmers and sheepherders and their settler neighbors, who do not recognize the right of non-Jews to inhabit the same land. The plan completely ignores the existence of Jewish zealots, acolytes of the Jewish terrorist from Hebron and students of the author of the obscene manuscript entitled “Torat Hamelech” (The Law of the King), a controversial rabbinical treatise permitting the killing of non-Jews under certain circumstances. • Since the plan is nothing more than a transparent election campaign ploy to keep Netanyahu in office, there is no need to exercise one’s imagination by describing the riot that would ensue if a young settler woman were to be arrested by the Palestinian police for possession of 9.5 grams of marijuana and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison (as was the case with Naama Issachar, who was freed last month from a Russian jail through Netanyahu’s intervention with President Vladimir Putin). What would Netanyahu give Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in return for the settler’s release? There is no need for a well-developed imagination to describe the events that would ensue on the day after implementation of the US annexation plan authored by Trump and Netanyahu.

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SUMMARY: Trump’s “peace plan” would leave 15 settlement enclaves planted in the middle of scattered Palestinian enclaves. As such, the plan constitutes a surefire recipe for the continuation of terror and of theft aimed at the Palestinians, who constantly suffer the violence of settler thugs sanctioned by the Torah and the government. The blessing given by the world’s largest power to the policy of territorial annexation is nothing less than a reward for violence. A significant part of the lands on which the settlers live was stolen from their helpless Palestinian neighbors, all, of course, with the permission of Israeli authorities, if not their outright encouragement. The map appended to the surrender document that the United States is dictating to the Palestinians perpetuates the points of friction between Palestinian farmers and sheepherders and their settler neighbors, who do not recognize the right of non- Jews to inhabit the same land. The plan completely ignores the existence of Jewish zealots, acolytes of the Jewish terrorist from Hebron and students of the author of the obscene manuscript entitled “Torat Hamelech” (The Law of the King), a controversial rabbinical treatise permitting the killing of non-Jews under certain circumstances.

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