Israel and the Middle East News Update

Friday, February 21

Headlines: • Poll: Blue and White 36, Likud 33, Liberman 7 • State Prosecutor Announces Probe of Gantz's Failed Startup • Law Enforcement Officials Slam Probe of Gantz’s Company • Netanyahu to 'Post': Democratic President Can’t Stop Trump Plan • If Netanyahu Wins, He’ll Advance Legislation to Prevent His Trial • PM Vows to Build Thousands of New Homes in East • Lieberman Says Netanyahu's Political Career Is Over • First Coronavirus Case in , Cruise Passenger Tests Positive

Commentary: • Times of Israel: “Israel’s 3rd Election Needs a Game-Changer. Will It Get One?” − By Yohanan Plesner, President of the Israel Democracy Institute • Ha’aretz: “Trump’s Mideast Plan Represents a Deep Paradigm Shift. What Should Israel Do Next?” − By Michael Herzog, international fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy

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 ● Yehuda Greenfield-Gilat, Associate Editor

News Excerpts February 21, 2020 Ma’ariv Poll: Blue and White 36, Likud 33, Liberman 7 With only ten days to go until the election, the situation remains vague: neither bloc has managed to attain the sought-after 61 seats to form a government. A date for the start of Netanyahu’s trial was set this week. The poll found that 54% of the public believes that his preoccupation with the trial will undermine his ability to carry out his job as prime minister. When broken down by party, 90% of Blue and White voters believe that the trial will undercut the prime minister’s performance, compared with 19% of Likud voters. 65% of Likud voters voters believe that the trial will not adversely impact his performance. 14.2% of respondents said that they still do not know for whom they will vote. See also, “March 2 election unlikely to resolve political crisis, poll shows” (Israel Hayom)

Ynet News State Prosecutor Announces Probe of Gantz's Failed Startup Acting State Prosecutor Dan Eldad on Thursday announced a criminal probe into a cybersecurity firm that was headed by Blue and White party chief Benny Gantz before it went bankrupt, but a statement from Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit indicated Gantz is not a suspect in the case.

Times of Israel Law Enforcement Officials Slam Probe of Gantz’s Company Law enforcement and state prosecution officials on Thursday night directed severe criticism at Acting State Attorney Dan Eldad over his speedy decision to order a criminal probe into a cybersecurity firm that was once headed by Blue and White party chief Benny Gantz. One official accused Eldad of being a “Trojan horse” and another saying he was a lackey of the ruling Likud party. The daily reported that prosecution officials had been surprised by Eldad’s decision, its timing mere days before a national election and the swiftness in which it was made: They said he’d only learned the details of the case this past week.

Jerusalem Post Netanyahu to 'Post': Democratic president can’t stop Trump plan Prime Minister expressed confidence on Thursday that even if a Democrat wins the American election, US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan will be implemented. Speaking with in his first English-speaking interview ahead of the March 2 election, Netanyahu said that what could stop the plan, however, is him not winning the election. “Once the Trump plan is put forward, the goalposts will have been moved, and it will be very difficult for any administration to move them back,” Netanyahu said. “We will move forward this plan once the mapping process is done, and it won’t take long, as long as I am re-elected.” Asked if it was important to apply sovereignty over territories before the American election, he said it would not be a factor. “Any administration, Democrat or Republican, will have to work by the new realities,” he said. “They will have to take the new situation into account. You can’t work based on falsehoods.”

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Yedioth Ahronoth If Netanyahu Wins, He’ll Advance Legislation to Prevent his Trial Even though Netanyahu has already withdrawn his request for parliamentary immunity and has already been formally indicted, he has not yet given up on trying to prevent his trial from being held. Senior Likud ministers said that if the right-wing bloc is able to emerge from the elections with a 61- seat majority, either Netanyahu will advance legislating the so-called “French law,” which will prevent him from being prosecuted as long as he is prime minister, or he will submit to the newly- elected a new request for parliamentary immunity from prosecution. One senior Likud minister said last night: “He’ll do anything so as not to meet the judges. Victory will mean that he’ll do everything to avoid being prosecuted.” One Likud minister said that he believed that if Netanyahu does lose to Gantz, he will have no alternative but to seek a plea bargain agreement.

Israel Hayom PM Vows to Build Thousands of New Homes in East Jerusalem Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Thursday he was pushing ahead with the construction of 5,000 new homes in key areas of east Jerusalem. On a visit to the Har Homa neighborhood, Netanyahu pledged to build the homes there and in the Givat Hamatos neighborhood. Both sit on some of the area linking the Palestinian areas of the West Bank to their hoped-for capital in east Jerusalem. Netanyahu pledged to turn Har Homa into a "mid-sized city," and expanding Israeli presence in the area. Construction in the areas has previously sparked an international outcry, over the alleged blow it deals the moribund Israeli=Palestinian peace process, which has been deadlocked since 2014. "We are connecting Jerusalem. We are connecting all parts of the united Jerusalem, the rebuilt Jerusalem," he said. "We did it in the face of fierce international opposition. We surmounted all the obstacles and we have done it."

Ha’aretz Lieberman Says Netanyahu's Political Career Is Over Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman said Thursday that Benjamin Netanyahu "can no longer be prime minister," as far as he's concerned. Lieberman told Israeli news website Walla that Netanyahu's political career has come to an end, adding that “Netanyahu has been in power for too long and has lost the instincts and the motivation to work and do what is necessary.” Moreover, Lieberman categorically ruled out that his party would recommend President Reuven Rivlin that Netanyahu be tasked with forming a government after the general election on March 2. He added, however, that he "would very much like to see Netanyahu's Likud as one of the parties forming the next governing coalition."

Jerusalem Post 1st Coronavirus Case in Israel, Cruise Passenger Tests Positive One of the Israelis that returned to Israel on Thursday from the coronavirus cruise ship was found to be infected with the coronavirus. The passenger contracted the virus while in Japan, and only after returning to Israel was found to have the virus. 11 of the 15 Israelis quarantined aboard the Diamond Princess departed Thursday on a charter plane and arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport on Friday.

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Times of Israel – February 19, 2020 Israel’s Third Election Needs a Game-Changer. Will it Get One? The future of Israel's slowly eroding democracy doesn't just depend on whom you vote for - but on who votes! By Yohanan Plesner • On March 2, Israelis will head back to the polls for a third time in 12 months. This previously unimaginable situation has left many asking: what – if anything – will be different this time around? • Will the newly publicized Trump peace plan prove to be a boon for Benjamin Netanyahu and help his Likud party succeed in forming a government after having failed to do so following the past two elections? Will Netanyahu’s official indictment, presented to the Jerusalem District Court on the same day on which Trump’s plan was published, convince voters that it is time to move on and put their trust in Benny Gantz and his Blue and White party? In the end, the answer might depend on who shows up at the polling place. • As we enter this last phase of the election, from now until Election Day, most people are focused on who sets the agenda. Gantz and his Blue and White Party want the electorate to focus on Netanyahu’s legal troubles and on the prospect of a sitting prime minister attending his trial in Jerusalem’s District Court in the morning, and then heading to his office to convene the cabinet in the evening. They know that Israelis, almost completely across the political spectrum are uneasy about the prospect of business as usual, as Netanyahu’s legal predicament worsens. • For the Likud, the plan is to focus on their strengths – the relative security and stability Israelis have enjoyed during the last 10 years that Netanyahu has served in office and his perceived ability steer the ship of state through turbulent regional and international waters. This is why Trump’s peace plan and the possibility of annexation (or, extending Israeli sovereignty) over parts of the West Bank, is back in the headlines. While the so-called “deal of the century” may threaten to upset the more extreme elements of the right-wing base, since it implies some possible Israeli concessions, the very fact that the Israeli voter could focus on Netanyahu the statesman as opposed to Netanyahu the defendant, is a net gain for the Likud. • The real focus of the campaigns, however, is on voter turnout. Or, more specifically, turning out their own voters. • For the parties, where turnout will be strong is even more important than general turnout. • As in the United States, geographic location can tell you a lot about people’s voting. Cities and towns, whose residents enjoy higher socioeconomic status, have consistently voted for parties belonging to the center-left bloc. Conversely, Israelis living in “development towns” and lower-to-middle class cites, such as the northern town Karmiel or Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam almost always vote for the Likud or one of its satellite parties. • If we take Karmiel as a case study, we can see why the Likud’s representation in the Knesset dropped. While 37% of those who voted in the April election chose Likud, in September this went down to 31%. At the same time, Blue and White’s share of the vote stayed steady at 26%. 4

• The real change can be seen in the numbers supporting Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party, which rose from 16% to almost 24%. It is important to note that this shift occurred despite Liberman having already made clear that he no longer necessarily sees himself as solely as a member of the center-right bloc. • A mirror image of this phenomenon can be found in upper middle-class cities such as Givatayim, Kfar Saba or Ra’anana. In these cities, Blue and White was able to keep its share of the votes, garnering between 40% and 50% in both national elections. More importantly, voter turnout remained steady– or even rose– from April to September. In the Likud strongholds, on the other hand, turnout dropped between the two rounds by 0.4%, and in some cities such as Karmiel, it sank as much as 1.3%. • This is exactly the trend that Netanyahu hopes to reverse now in March. He is counting on his base coming out to vote this time. Netanyahu is assuming that while an estimated 300,000 potential voters stayed home in September, now — when they see that the Likud-led government is in danger, and perhaps empathize with his sense that he is being victimized by the so-called elites, the base will come out in droves. Gantz, of course, hopes for the opposite, and is betting that his base will be fired up by Netanyahu’s indictment and the prospect of defeating him for the first time in over a decade. • It is impossible to predict how Israelis will react to this third election and if they will show up at the polls. IDI’s latest survey indicates that the public is not following this campaign as closely as in the previous round. Still, it is important to remember that in September, the pundits were surprised by the amount of faith shown in our democratic system, with voter participation actually increasing to 70% from 68% in April’s election. • Rational thinking would seem to indicate that March’s election will be the last one of this zany cycle. With no 2020 budget in place, Israel is now operating on 1/12th of the 2019 budget. All reforms and government plans are essentially frozen. And while the security services continue to do their utmost to keep the country safe, Iran is more belligerent than ever, the region is transforming at a dizzying pace, and now the American administration is adding its peace plan to the mix. This should spur our elected officials to seek the quickest route to governmental stability. • Nevertheless, if the events of the past year have taught us anything, it is that Israel’s democratic system is more broken than we previously imagined. While the civil service remains dedicated, and key institutions such as the judicial system are standing strong under immense pressure, the underlying foundations of our democracy are being eroded. • The electoral system is not producing a government and is in dire need of reform; key segments of the Arab and ultra-Orthodox communities are feeling alienated, while many in the political center are concerned that religious extremists have an increasingly outsized voice in determining the character of the state. In short, it is becoming more apparent with each passing day how fragile the constitutional framework of our democracy truly is. • We can only hope that after March 2nd, whatever the result, political leaders across the spectrum will put their short-term personal interests aside and not only form a government, but actually get to work to implement desperately needed reforms to safeguard the future of Israel’s democracy. 5

Yohanan Plesner is the President of the Israel Democracy Institute. He served as a Member of Knesset for the party from 2007–2013. He lives in Hod HaSharon with his wife and four daughters.

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Ha’aretz – February 21, 2020 Trump’s Mideast Plan Represents a Deep Paradigm Shift. What Should Israel Do Next?

The proposal could leave a mark by creating a new, powerful point of reference for any future Israeli leader, but it must not be adopted as a rigid operative blueprint

By Michael Herzog

• President Donald Trump’s peace plan represents a deep paradigm shift from every prior attempt since 1993 – most of which I was actively involved in – to address the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. As a plan that could influence critical elements of Israel’s national security, it deserves to be the subject of public deliberation going beyond the tumult of an election campaign. • The paradigm that guided Israel in prior negotiations was that this is a conflict between two national movements with contradictory claims and historical narratives over the same slice of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. One cannot ignore the demographic reality, nor should one assume that the Palestinians will throw away their own narrative. Therefore, if Israel wishes to ensure its future as a Jewish and democratic state, it should strive to create a new reality – one mutually agreed-upon, not imposed – based on political separation and a division of the West Bank. • This new reality has to overcome the historical narratives, strike a balance between Israel’s critical security needs and Palestinian political aspirations, and bring about an end of conflict. Various Israeli prime ministers have struck their desirable balance on various points differently than each other, yet all of them (including Benjamin Netanyahu) entered negotiations on the basis of this paradigm. • Now, for the first time, in consultation with Israel, the United States is presenting a detailed plan with a map to fully resolve all the core issues – and it comes down unequivocally on the side of the Jewish national movement’s historical narrative. It definitively decides not only the issue of the needs of each party to the agreement, but also the question of who is right. It addresses not only issues created by the 1967 Six-Day War (the “'67 file”) but also those emerging from the 1948 War (the “'48 file”), including reconsideration of the 1949 armistice lines. It reconfigures both the post-1948 and post-1967 territories and, as a historical correction, proposes (theoretically) that some areas inhabited by Arab-Israeli citizens (the “Triangle”) be transferred to the new Palestinian state. • The Trump administration argues that the old paradigm has failed and, therefore, a new paradigm is required. Indeed, to the best of my judgment, we were never really close to a breakthrough that would lead to a final-status agreement; we never fully succeeded in bridging the gaps on even one of the core issues. • Not enough time has passed to analyze why that occurred. Regardless, after more than 25 years of failure, we’ve now reached the point where I cannot see the parties having any chance to merge their minimum demands into an agreement that would resolve the core issues and

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end the conflict and all mutual claims. Meanwhile, both sides have moved even farther from an agreement – in their physical and political realities as well as in their perceptions. • It’s true that one shouldn’t sanctify an old paradigm that didn’t work, and it’s appropriate to reconsider our basic assumptions. But is the Trump plan the right alternative paradigm for Israel? We must first answer several preliminary questions. • Does the Trump plan give Israel practical means to meet its security needs in a post- agreement reality? • Yes, absolutely. The Palestinian state will be effectively demilitarized. Israel will have overriding security responsibility for the entire territory and control over the Jordan Valley. It will also control the airspace, sea space, electromagnetic spectrum, and more. • We’ve had serious arguments about many of these items in the past, not just with the Palestinians but also with our American friends. Now, for the first time, a U.S. administration has fully accepted the most expansive Israeli version of security arrangements in an agreement. • Nevertheless, the plan raises quite a few serious questions. Israel is required to compensate the Palestinians for the 30 percent of the West Bank allotted to it by the plan with “reasonably comparable” territorial swaps. The basis for this calculation is 100 percent of the territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which were held by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, until 1967. Doing the calculation based on the peace plan’s map shows that the territorial swaps will be in a ratio of roughly 2:1 in Israel’s favor. This means that Israel will have to give Palestine a significant chunk of territory equivalent to more than twice the size of Gaza. Most will be in the Negev, near the Egyptian border. • Here are some of the questions that invite a public, strategic debate: • Why is annexing dozens of isolated settlements and creating a series of sovereign enclaves within the territory of Palestine (when the will anyway have overriding security responsibility for the entire territory) more important than retaining territory in the Negev, which gives Israel strategic depth and serves as the IDF’s main training ground? What does it mean to create and maintain a new Israeli-Palestinian border (open? closed?) that will be more than 1,300 kilometers (nearly 810 miles) long? What does it mean to have dozens of Palestinian enclaves in Israeli territory and 15 Israeli enclaves in Palestinian territory? Moreover, is applying sovereignty the only solution for safeguarding each and every Israeli interest? And where does the balance lie between the advantages of putting certain territory under Israeli sovereignty, and the disadvantages of opening the door to citizenship for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in that territory? • Can Trump’s plan be a basis for negotiations? • I can’t see any Palestinian leader who would agree to negotiate on the basis of a plan that conditions Palestinian statehood on a list of criteria, some of which sound to Palestinian ears like surrendering their own narrative; others (demilitarizing Gaza) have zero chance of being met; and still others (a high standard of democracy and human rights) don’t currently exist in any Arab country.

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• And beyond all these obstacles, the Palestinians see a shrunken, divided state surrounded by an Israeli envelope, with a capital in some peripheral neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. The billions of dollars promised the Palestinians by the plan won’t sweeten the pill for them; this promise may even have the opposite effect. The Trump plan is thus rejected by the vast majority of the Palestinian public (as indicated by opinion polls), and any Palestinian leader who might succeed President Mahmoud Abbas – the last of the generation of the Palestinian national movement’s founders, who is focused on his patently inglorious legacy – will be obliged to consolidate his position by declaring war on it. • If the Trump plan isn’t a platform for negotiations, then of what use might it be? The answer to that will obviously be influenced by the results of the upcoming elections in both Israel and America. But in any case, it’s reasonable to believe the plan will leave a mark by creating a new, powerful point of reference for any future Israeli leader. • At least in the short term, Israel has a decisive ability to influence how the situation develops. It enjoys unprecedented support from a friendly U.S. administration and benefits from the winds of nationalism that are blowing worldwide and reopening old territorial conventions (like Russia in Crimea and India in Kashmir); the historic nadir to which the Palestinian national movement has fallen; and the rather cold shoulder the Arab world is giving the Palestinians, which heralds a tectonic regional shift. • On this basis, Israel could choose to embark on unilateral annexation in the West Bank – from which it has refrained for 53 years. This could involve anything from annexing certain parts of the territory to realizing the whole Land of Israel vision. Will this serve Israel’s long-term security and its future as a Jewish and democratic state? • Annexation supporters respond to warnings about the evident potential negative implications (closing the door to an agreement; undermining the security situation in the territories; undermining Jordan and Israel’s critical relationship with it; slowing normalization with Arab states; fueling an international delegitimization campaign against Israel, and more) by arguing that even if some of these come true, they are overcome by a one-time historic opportunity to secure vital Israeli interests that we mustn’t miss – and, ultimately, the world will come to terms with it. In any case, they add, there’s no Palestinian partner for an agreement under Israeli consensus conditions and the Palestinians shouldn’t be rewarded for rejectionism. Since they already have and are further offered an autonomous entity where they hold citizenship, vote and maintain a separate community life, the sting has been removed from the danger of sliding into a binational state. • Notwithstanding the merit of some of these arguments, unilateral implementation of the plan may well prove a slippery slope that could lead to a dangerous, unstable reality. What follows is a scenario that’s no less realistic than the optimistic one: • Israeli annexation measures will signal to the entire world that Israel is closing the door on separating through an agreement and is moving to unilaterally redefine the arena of the conflict. This message, in time, may well push the Palestinians to redefine the arena in the direction of one state with equal rights for all – and at some point, they may win significant international support for this. Even today, there is broad sympathy for this idea among young Palestinians, and it will grow.

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• In such a situation, there’s no guarantee that the Palestinian Authority will continue to exist. Over time, both the PA and the Palestinian “islands” in the territories may well collapse into the Israeli envelope, thereby augmenting the demographic and political challenges for Israel. Pressure for a binational reality won’t necessarily come solely from above; it will be fed by a bottom-up push; a sample of which is already evidenced by the Palestinian influx into areas of Jerusalem under Israeli control. And we haven’t even mentioned the consequences of the mutual interaction between Palestinians from the territories and Arab Israelis, both treated by the Trump plan as one unit. • One can argue about the chances of such a nightmare scenario coming true, but it’s impossible to dismiss. Doesn’t a gamble like this over Israel’s future justify a referendum? • Israel must not adopt the Trump plan as a rigid operative blueprint. It should work to stabilize the fluid situation on the ground, frame the plan as a platform for separating rather than intermingling, and aspire to do this cautiously and gradually, all while protecting its security interests and assets and preferably in the framework of regional understandings. • After all, the wisest of all men warned us in Ecclesiastes against the “riches kept for the owner thereof to his hurt.” Brig. Gen. (res.) Michael Herzog is an International Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a Senior Fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute.

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