Israel and the Middle East News Update

Thursday, October 30

Headlines:  Israeli Forces Kill Man Suspected of Involvement in Activist’s Shooting  PM Blames Abbas for Inciting Shooting of Jewish Activist  Abbas: 'We Are Not Calling for an Intifada'  Senior Government Members Slam Netanyahu for 'Losing '  Amid Crisis, Netanyahu's Senior Adviser to Hold White House Talks  PLO Submits Resolution to UNSC to ‘End Occupation'  Sweden Officially Recognizes State of Palestine

Commentary:  : “The Redhead and the ”  By Nahum Barnea  Yedioth Ahronoth: “Preserving Our Honor”  By Yuval Diskin

S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace 633 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 20004 www.centerpeace.org ● Yoni Komorov, Editor ● Nathaniel Sobel, Associate Editor

News Excerpts October 30, 2014 New York Times Israeli Forces Kill Man Suspected of Involvement in Activist’s Shooting Israeli counterterrorism forces in East Jerusalem shot and killed a Palestinian man on Thursday morning who was suspected of involvement in Wednesday’s assassination attempt against Yehuda Glick, a prominent Israeli-American activist who has agitated for more Jewish access to a contested holy site. Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the police, said a counterterrorism unit had surrounded a house in the Abu Tor neighborhood and was trying to make an arrest in the Glick case when shots were fired at the officers. The man was shot and killed immediately, Mr. Rosenfeld said. The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, identified the man who was killed as Mu’atez Hijazi and said he was released in 2012 after spending 11 years in an Israeli prison. He was said to be in his early 30s.

Times of PM Blames Abbas for Inciting Shooting of Jewish Activist

Prime Minister said Thursday that incitement by Palestinian Authority President was to blame for the shooting of a Temple Mount activist a night earlier. Netanyahu convened a meeting of top security officials Thursday morning, a day after , a prominent activist for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount, was shot in an apparent assassination attempt. “I said only days ago that we are facing a wave of incitement by radical Islamic elements and by Palestinian Authority head Abu Mazen, who said that the ascent of to the Temple Mount needs to be prevented by every means,” Netanyahu said. “I still have not heard one word of condemnation from the international community against this incitement. The international community needs to stop its hypocrisy and act against the inciters, those who are trying to change the status quo,” Netanyahu said.

Israel National News Abbas: 'We Are Not Calling for an Intifada' Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas attempted to clean up his image on Wednesday, in an interview with Channel 10, after he made a number of threats against Jews and earlier this month. Abbas's interview began with him denying that the recent uprisings in Jerusalem are an "intifada". "We do not want an intifada," Abbas claimed. "We are not calling for an intifada." "If we were calling for an intifada, we would have done so during the fifty days of Operation Protective Edge [in Gaza]," Abbas added. "Prime Minister Netanyahu has forgotten that during those 50 days, not one bullet was fired from the West Bank?" Abbas then called on Israeli citizens to get the State of Israel to resume peace talks, claiming that if it did, "57 Arab countries would, along with us, recognize Israel and the normalization of Israeli-Palestinian relations." See also, “Abbas to Israel: Make peace with us and 57 other nations will follow” (Jerusalem Post)

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Ynet News Senior Government Members Slam Netanyahu for 'Losing Jerusalem' Senior members of his own government lashed out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday night, in the aftermath of an attempted assassination of right-wing activist Rabbi Yehuda Glick, accusing him of allowing tensions in Jerusalem to spiral out of control. Netanyahu, the lawmakers charged, "was losing Jerusalem." "For the past two months, the prime minister has not managed to get the security situation in the capital under control," said the senior officials. "Instead of recycling construction announcements and instead of fighting with the United States, he should bring security and order to Jerusalem. What we see now is complete loss of control."

Ha’aretz Amid Crisis, Netanyahu's Senior Adviser to Hold White House Talks Amid the ongoing crisis between Jerusalem and Washington, a senior Israeli delegation will hold diplomatic and security-related talks at the White House on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said at a daily briefing Wednesday. U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice will host the Israeli delegation, headed by Yossi Cohen, the national security adviser at the Prime Minister's Office. "These consultations are a testament to the unprecedented level of security cooperation between the U.S. and Israel," Earnest said. The White House press secretary repeated the message offered by various spokespeople throughout the day, distancing the administration from disparaging remarks about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu anonymously made to Jeffrey Goldberg in an interview published on Tuesday.

Jerusalem Post PLO Submits Resolution to UNSC to ‘End Occupation' PLO ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour told the Security Council on Wednesday that, at the request of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, he would present a draft resolution that “contain[s] elements of parameters [of withdrawal] with a time frame to end the occupation.” Jordan called the emergency session to discuss the Middle East and the “question of Palestine,” following a letter from the Palestinians addressed to the Security Council and the UN secretary-general, to meet and discuss the plans to build over the Green Line approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week.

Times of Israel Sweden Officially Recognizes State of Palestine Sweden officially recognized the State of Palestine on Thursday, making it the first major European Union member state to back Ramallah’s statehood bid in this way. “It’s an important step that confirms the right of Palestinians to self-determination,” the country’s foreign minister, Margot Wallström, wrote Thursday in a newspaper article. “Sweden’s traditionally close ties with the State of Israel are now complemented by an equal relationship to the other party.” With the recognition, Stockholm became the first European Union capital to put its full weight behind Palestine.

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Yedioth Ahronoth – October 30, 2014 The Redhead and the Temple Mount By Nahum Barnea  Yehuda Glick is what is referred to as a “Jerusalem character” —a combination of colorful and convivial redhead, someone who is always ready with a story, who is zealous about one thing, one idea, that filled his entire being. His life’s mission was to break the status quo on the Temple Mount. Others have worked for the same goal over the years, but no one became addicted to it like Yehuda Glick did.  He is a tour guide by profession. That is also what he claimed every time the police made him keep his distance from the Temple Mount: you are harming my livelihood. But his livelihood was not the story.  We met several times, if not on the Temple Mount or the Old City, then in the corridors where he would enlist MKs from the right wing factions to his ideas. He repeatedly said that he was working for peace. All that he wanted was for Jews to be able to go to the Temple Mount and pray there. I contended that his actions would bring Israel to a war against the entire Muslim world. I thought that he was endangering us all. You are playing with fire, I told him, and it never occurred to me that first of all, he was endangering himself. His colorful image and his daily presence on the Temple Mount turned him into a target.  When Moshe Dayan set the arrangements for the Temple Mount, religious Jews did not visit it. The Jewish religious prohibition made it possible for Dayan to leave control over the Temple Mount in the hands of the Muslim Wakf, under the supervision and the presence of the Israel Police. Over the course of the years fanatics on both sides tried to change the rules of the game, Sheikh Raed Salah on one side and members of the Jewish underground on the other side, but the rules were upheld.  In recent years, a change took place on the Jewish side: religious Zionists began to visit the Temple Mount. They exempted themselves from the religious prohibition, and some of them even chose to pray there and to clash with the Wakf and the police. Every day, Glick sent text messages with news from the Temple Mount: Muslims are harassing Jews; the police are harassing Jews, the Temple Mount is on fire. He and his friends persuaded right wing MKs to formulate a bill to change the arrangements for the Temple Mount. Reports of the bill made headlines in the Arab world and contributed quite a bit to the wave of violence in Jerusalem in the last few months. The claim was that Israel is planning to take over the el-Aksa Mosque.  The assassination attempt of Glick is another stage in the escalation. It did not happen on the Temple Mount, it did not happen in East Jerusalem but in western Jerusalem, which up until today, observed events from afar. Judging by the circumstances, this was a deliberate attack, it was not spontaneous, it was a terror attack in every sense.  This is bad and this is worrying. Of all the places in Jerusalem, the Temple Mount is the most sensitive and the most charged and the most dangerous. It has the power to turn our national conflict into a religious war. It would be best to leave it alone: this fire must be extinguished, not have more fuel added to it.

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Yedioth Ahronoth – October 30, 2014 Preserving Our Honor By Yuval Diskin  As a citizen of Israel I was uncomfortable and even insulted when anonymous administration officials used vulgar language to attack our prime minister—regardless of how critical I am about almost every one of his issues and his weak policies that lack initiative.  I also think that it is entirely legitimate for the Israeli government to disagree with the American administration in certain situations, but it is important that these conflicts be on truly fundamental issues, and not for the purpose of temporary populist needs in the face of voters or rightwing coalition partners, during processes that are entirely political spin.  Let us remember a few issues on the agenda with the United States: beyond the generous annual aid that we receive from the United States and which seems obvious to us; only two or three months ago, at the height of Operation Protective Edge, we needed a massive amount of military and munitions aid from the United States.  It stands to reason, that we will soon need an American veto in the UN Security Council regarding Abu Mazen’s request to recognize a Palestinian state.  Likewise, we will also need significant American aid if as he plans to do, Abu Mazen increases pressure on the various international institutions with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Furthermore, the sanctions against the State of Israel that are being considered by various countries in the world in the face of these defiant and populist policies, mostly construction in the territories, will require significant American political aid.  But the most amazing thing to me—just a few days ago we heard that the prime minister has been implementing a quiet construction freeze in view of the fact that we will soon require an American veto. And only less than a month ago, the prime minister explained that Peace Now’s move to publicize his intention to build 2,500 housing units over the Green Line while he was meeting with the American president (the timing of which I also completely deplore) was an act of sabotage.  So if the prime minister understood that we need a quiet building freeze, and if he understood that this report (just like the one during his meeting with the president) will result in harsh reactions and will endanger the State of Israel’s interests—what is the explanation for his decision to advance the plans to build 1,060 apartments in East Jerusalem that is a current hotspot? What logic could explain this illogic?  Obviously the explanation that we received is that the champion of the quiet building freeze suddenly remembered that we have the right to build on every hilltop between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River again, no matter what. However, the truth is apparently more disappointing and is similar to what I described in the past—our prime minister once again prioritized his own survival over a clear national interest.

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