Israel and the Middle East News Update

Friday, July 22

Headlines:  Lieberman Opposes Postponement of Broadcasting Corporation  Lieberman Slammed for Comparing Palestinian Poet’s Work to Mein Kampf  Arab MKs Plan to Read Darwish’s Poems in the Knesset  , Palestinian Authority in Diplomatic Battle Over Africa  Egypt’s President ‘Serious’ About Pushing Forward Peace Talks  Hollande: France Committed to Leading Israel-Palestinian Talks  Turkey to Temporarily Suspend Human Rights Convention  Iran Threatens Faster Uranium Enrichment If Nuclear Deal Violated

Commentary:  Al-Monitor: “War of Words: Palestinian Poetry Broadcast Terrifies the Right”  By Shlomi Eldar, Israel Pulse Columnist, Al-Monitor  Middle East Eye: “How Palestinian President Made an Enemy of the UAE”  By Rori Donaghy, Founder, Emirates Centre for Human Rights

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

News Excerpts July 22, 2016

Ma’ariv Lieberman Opposes Postponement of Broadcasting Corporation The front against the prime minister in the coalition is expanding against his decision to postpone to 2018 the start of operations of the corporation broadcasts. , defense minister and Yisrael Beiteinu chairman, joined the opponents of postponement yesterday. Lieberman will meet with Netanyahu at the beginning of next week in the framework of the prime minister’s periodic meetings with the chairs of the coalition parties at which time he will likely inform him he is opposed to postponing the corporation’s broadcasts. Lieberman told his associates yesterday that it is too late to change things now and a postponement would entail high costs. See also, “Ministers Criticize Netanyahu Postponement of New Public Broadcast Body” (BICOM)

Ha’aretz Lieberman Slammed for Comparing Palestinian Poet to Hitler Defense Minister Avidgor Lieberman was roundly criticized by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and from Israeli Arab lawmakers for comparing a recent Army Radio broadcast of a program about Palestinian poet with "glorification of the literary marvels of Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf.'…Up to now, we've known that the defense minister was racist, violent and hallucinatory," said Joint List MK Ahmad Tibi, who had been a friend of the late poet. By summoning the manager of Army Radio, Yaron Dekel, to a meeting about the station's broadcast of the program about Darwish, Lieberman has shown himself to be ignorant, Tibi said, but by comparing Darwish and Hitler, "it turns out that he is also a Holocaust denier." Even in death, Tibi added, Darwish will "also withstand cultural commissars like Lieberman and [Culture and Sports Minister Miri] Regev." See also, “Lieberman to Army Radio Commander: Palestinian Poet Can't Be a Part of Israeli Narrative” (Ynet News)

Ma’ariv Arab MKs Plan to Read Darwish’s Poems in the Knesset Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) and Army Radio Commander Yaron Dekel met yesterday and clarified their positions on the matter of the military station’s content, after it dedicated a program to the Palestinian national poet, Mahmoud Darwish. Following the comparison made by Lieberman of Darwish’s works to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the MKs of the Joint List announced that in protest they would read poems by Darwish in the Knesset plenum.

Jerusalem Post Israel, Palestinian Authority in Diplomatic Battle Over Africa Israel is continuing to make inroads into Africa, as Chad – which has suddenly found itself on the front lines in the battle against Islamic extremists – is expected to be the next majority-Muslim African state to reestablish ties with Jerusalem. Guinea and Israel announced the reestablishment of ties on Wednesday, and Prime Minister – who visited four East African countries earlier this month – said that another African country would soon follow suit. See also, “Israel, Guinea Renew Diplomatic Ties After Half a Century” (Algemeiner) 2

BICOM Egypt's President 'Serious' About Pushing Forward Peace Talks Egypt’s President yesterday reiterated his determination to lead progress towards peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). Yesterday, speaking live on Egyptian television, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi addressed “Egypt’s recent serious effort,” which “aims to break the deadlock that has hung over peace efforts”. He said: “It is a sincere effort to make everyone face their responsibilities and warn of the consequences of delays in achieving peace.” i24 News Hollande: France Committed to Leading Israel-Palestinian Talks French President Francois Hollande told Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas in Paris on Thursday that his country is committed to leading international efforts to help secure peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Hollande confirmed "France's commitment to building on the momentum created" on June 3, when Paris hosted senior diplomats to work towards organizing an international conference to reboot talks by the end of the year. The French leader "expressed his concern over the fragile situation in the Middle East and escalating violence", a statement from the presidency said.

Hurriyet Daily News Turkey to Temporarily Suspend Human Rights Convention Turkey will temporarily suspend the implementation of its obligations emanating from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), in line with the declaration of a state of emergency, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş has said, while vowing that fundamental rights and freedoms will not be affected during this period. “France has also recently proclaimed a state of emergency. And they suspended the ECHR, based on Article 15 of the convention,” Kurtulmuş told a group of Ankara bureau chiefs of media outlets on July 21. “A declaration of a state of emergency is not against the ECHR,” he said, adding that Ankara would announce its decision to suspend the ECHR through a formal statement. Article 15 of the ECHR stipulates: “In time of war or other public emergencies threatening the life of the nation, any High Contracting Party may take measures derogating from its obligations under this Convention to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation, provided that such measures are not inconsistent with its other obligations under international law.” See also, “With State of Emergency, Turkey Suspends Human Rights Convention” (Times of Israel)

Times of Israel Iran Threatens Faster Uranium Enrichment If Nuke Deal Violated Tehran’s nuclear chief on Wednesday threatened that Iran would quickly resume uranium enrichment at a faster pace than before if the US-led P5+1 were to violate the year-old nuclear deal, and the speaker of Iran’s parliament called for preparation to build a new nuclear plant to carry out such enrichment. Speaking a year after the deal was signed, and amid Iranian complaints that promised economic advantages have yet to fully materialize, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said in a TV interview reported by Fars news that Iran can enrich uranium at an even higher capacity than before the agreement was signed. See also, “Iranian Official Warns: Iran Left with No Choice But to Confront US” (Jerusalem Post)

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Al-Monitor – July 21, 2016 War of Words: Palestinian Poetry Broadcast Terrifies Israeli Right By Shlomi Eldar  Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman summoned Army Radio commander Yiron Dekel for a reprimand July 20. The station had broadcast a program on the work of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, as part of a series on formative Israeli texts. “It is obvious that this represents a failure and cannot go unchallenged,” said the defense minister’s spokesperson. He commented that this is a serious matter, as to this very day Darwish’s works add fuel to the fire of terrorism against the State of Israel.  The summoning of the commander of the military radio station for “clarification” by the defense minister led to some angry responses. Zionist Camp Knesset member , for example, slammed Liberman’s reaction on Facebook, calling it “a step that can only be defined as characterizing fascist regimes.” The Meretz chairman, Knesset member Ilan Gilon, argued, “In a place where poetry is silenced, people will be silenced as well.”  The Darwish storm broke following a Facebook post by Culture and Sport Minister . Regev wrote that she was shocked that Army Radio had featured the work of the Palestinian national poet. “The IDF [] radio station has gone off the rails,” she said, and quoted a section of “Identity Card,” which was featured on the program. In his famous poem, written in 1964, Darwish wrote, “I do not hate people. I steal from no one. However, if I am hungry I will eat the flesh of my usurper. Beware, beware of my hunger and of my anger.”  It made no difference to the defense and culture ministers that the poem was aired on Army Radio as part of a series of formative texts on the station’s “Broadcast University” program. The show targets students who want to broaden their educational horizons. Neither did it matter that Darwish’s poems are already included in Israel’s high school literature curriculum.  “The poet’s freedom to write what he wants is the cornerstone of democracy,” Israeli poet Ronny Someck told Al-Monitor. “First you have to know and be familiar [with the poems]. Only afterward can you argue if you are pro or con.” Someck views Darwish’s poem collection as “the first bolt of the bridge we want to build between Jews and Arabs.”  Today’s Israel, led by a right-wing government, seems not to support the building of this bridge. The outrage over Darwish’s poem joins the ongoing perversion of anything rejected by the worldview of the right-wing regime in Israel, including educational and cultural issues and basic historical concepts.  There are many examples of this erosion, from the rewriting of the civics textbook for Israeli pupils by Naftali Bennett’s Education Ministry, to Regev’s brutal assaults on cultural and artistic institutions and her demand that these establishments declare their loyalty to Israel or face budgetary cutbacks and culminating in attacks by right-wing ministers on Israeli media outlets and their "encouragement" to adopt the Israeli narrative and work to strengthen Israel's Jewish heritage.

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 Less than a year ago, the Education Ministry published a pamphlet directing high school principals to focus on certain meanings and emphasize certain points in the study of civics. For example, the pamphlet states that civic studies must focus on love of the nation and the land, as well as the study of Jewish heritage and Jewish tradition. Regarding the Arab language, the pamphlet states that priority should be given to the study of the Hebrew language as the official language that corresponds to the character of the state, while the Arab language enjoys “special status.”  On one hand, the Education Ministry did make the historic decision to make spoken Arabic a required subject in elementary schools. However, a teacher of Arabic told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that in the current atmosphere in Israel, youths rarely choose to study Arabic later on in high school as a specialized course. They view it as the “language of the enemy.” According to data provided by the Education Ministry’s Pedagogic Secretariat in June 2015, only 6,000 Israeli students — only 1.5% of all the Jewish high school students in Israel — chose to study Arabic as a high school major, despite Arabic being the second official language of the State of Israel.  The current Israeli atmosphere is of fear and existential threat from neighbors, including Israeli Arabs (who were “voting in droves" on election day, in the words of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu). Thus, the narrative that has taken hold is that Arabic is the language of the terrorists and there is no need to study it. By extension, Arab (mainly Palestinian) literature, poetry and culture must be boycotted to prevent Jewish youth from exposure to what the far- right camp considers defamatory. This atmosphere explains the attacks on the Hamashbir Lazarchan department store chain, which dared air a commercial in Arabic on Channel 2 during prime time. There have even been calls to boycott the chain “for encouraging terrorists.” It seems that no importance at all is assigned to the inculcation of knowledge by critical and selective reading among the Jewish youth and the public in general.  “I don’t put Darwish’s books on the shelf of Arab writers,” said Someck. “I put them on the shelf of Israeli authors. Darwish was influenced by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. He was very familiar with Jewish poet Hayim Nahman Bialik’s poetry and was friendly with many Israeli writers and poets. If you want to get to know and understand your neighbor and the ‘other’ in your home, you must learn his or her language and literature.”  As an example, Someck brought up the meeting held by Israeli writer Haim Gouri in Egypt after late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Israel in 1977. Gouri met with an Egyptian intellectual who told him, “If Israeli intelligence had read Egyptian poetry written after 1967, they would have realized that October 1973 [] was inevitable. Every good intelligence officer must read poetry.” Shlomi Eldar is a columnist for Al-Monitor’s Israel Pulse covering the Palestinian Authority and Gaza.

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Middle East Eye – July 20, 2016 How Palestinian President Made an Enemy of the UAE

Emirates withholds $500m in funding for Palestinian Authority as row boils over between its president, Mahmoud Abbas, and UAE crown prince.

By Rori Donaghy  An escalating five-year row between the United Arab Emirates and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is behind the Gulf state's recent decision to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars from the Palestinian Authority, Middle East Eye can reveal. Lebanese columnist Jihad al-Khazen published an interview in June with an unidentified Gulf official who described the PA as a “hodgepodge of failure and corruption” and called on it to resign. A source close to Khazen told MEE on condition of anonymity that the Gulf official was Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan – a claim also made by official Palestinian news agency WAFA.  Bin Zayed told Khazen that the UAE had given the authority $500m every year for four years and that he had “personally wore a badge bearing the Palestinian keffiyeh (scarf) as a symbol of solidarity”. But this funding has recently been stopped because of an escalating row between Bin Zayed and Abbas, which has seen former PA prime minister Salam Fayyad investigated for alleged money laundering over his financial links with the UAE. In June last year, the Palestinian attorney general, Abdul Ghani Oweiwi, ordered a $700,000 donation from the UAE be confiscated from Palestine Tomorrow for Social Development - a development organization founded by Fayyad that seeks to alleviate poverty in the occupied West Bank.  Fayyad was accused of money laundering and using Emirati money for political purposes as part of a soft coup to overthrow the PA’s leadership. However, a month after the donation was confiscated, the Palestinian Supreme Court ordered it to be returned to the former prime minister’s organization. Despite the money being returned, Bin Zayed has not forgiven Abbas and he, according to Khazen, is demanding the Palestinian president publicly apologize for the allegations made against Fayyad and the UAE. “Do you believe the UAE would choose to launder through Palestine, and that amount would be just $700,00?” the Crown Prince told Khazen, who said the UAE leader spoke “with his anger plain to see”. Bin Zayed said Abu Dhabi has given $10m to Fayyad’s organization, which he established after resigning as prime minister in June 2013.  The Emirati royal went on to say that the PA “in its entirety must resign, as there is no trust in it”. At the root of the row between Bin Zayed and Abbas is exiled former Fatah official Mohammed Dahlan, who was expelled from the Palestinian president’s movement in June 2011 after being accused repeatedly of murdering the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Dahlan moved to the UAE after his expulsion where he works as an adviser to Bin Zayed, with who he has built a close personal and professional relationship. A source close to Dahlan told MEE the Palestinian has impressed Bin Zayed with his “intelligence and ability” and also his “good relationship with the Israelis”.  However, before Dahlan’s UAE move, Bin Zayed attempted to stop Abbas from expelling him and instead urged the Palestinian president to heal the rift. 6

 In a trip to Abu Dhabi in 2011, Abbas promised Bin Zayed he would solve the disagreement with Dahlan and that he would not expel him, a senior Palestinian source told MEE. But when Abbas returned to the West Bank he went back on his word and threw Dahlan out of Fatah. “[Bin Zayed] reacted angrily,” the Palestinian source said. “He said Abbas is not a man, has no dignity or respect, and that it was over between them. He told Dahlan that the UAE was now his country.” In an attempt to avoid making a powerful enemy, Abbas tried to mediate with Bin Zayed through his son Yasser, who he sent to Abu Dhabi to try and convince the Emiratis that they should not give Dahlan refuge. These attempts proved futile and Bin Zayed told Yasser Abbas to return home and tell his father: “Look boy, the home of Zayed is the home of all Arabs. Go and tell your father this.”  After Yasser Abbas was sent home, Dahlan quickly made Abu Dhabi his home and over the course of the past five years he has been allowed access to the UAE’s sizeable financial coffers, which he has used to build influence back at home in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. A senior Hamas source told MEE that in 2014 and 2015 Dahlan spent $25m in Gaza. The money, the source said, has been used to support families who lost relatives in Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza as well as to pay for mass weddings. When asked why Hamas would allow Dahlan – a long-time opponent of their Islamist movement – to operate in Gaza the source said: “There are two reasons: The first is that we are poor and the second is to provoke Abbas.” Abbas has been in open conflict with Hamas since 2007, after the latter defeated the former’s Fatah movement in the previous year’s general election, leading to violence between the two groups causing a political split that continues to be unresolved.  Dahlan has also been spending an unknown amount of money in the West Bank, principally in refugee camps, where he has been building support for a long suspected bid to be the next Palestinian president. A source close to Dahlan said he has constructed a parallel Fatah leadership system in the West Bank that mirrors the movement’s organizational structure. He chairs the “system within a system” and personally oversees an 18-person revolutionary council. Local branches based in refugee camps operate under the council, electing their own leaders and possessing a budget provided by Dahlan. This structure is being developed in preparation for Dahlan’s plans to eventually return home and takeover from Abbas, the source said. “He wants to be president. Dahlan said ‘I come next but not immediately’. He thinks there should be an interim leader who will quickly hand over power to him,” the source said.  Dahlan’s ability to spend large sums of money in poor Palestinian communities has allowed him to build significant public support, but his increasingly powerful position was far from inevitable. The source close to Dahlan said when he was expelled in 2011, he was not in a strong position, and that in expelling him Abbas made his enemy stronger than he was likely to have ever become. “Dahlan was helpless, he was a wounded lion,” the source said. “When he was kicked out [of the West Bank] he had been marginalized.” However, since 2011, Dahlan has transformed into one of the most influential power brokers in the region, advising the UAE on how to “make money and grow their influence”. Dahlan’s ever increasing power has bred a sense of paranoia in Abbas, who now sees his enemy’s influence everywhere he turns. And wherever he sees Dahlan plotting he also believes he sees Emirati money.  The accusations against Fayyad were not surprising to those aware that the former Palestinian prime minister is known to have a good relationship with Dahlan – although multiple sources told MEE that Fayyad is not part of any claimed plot against the PA. 7

 “But Abbas thinks Fayyad is Dahlan’s man,” the source close to Dahlan said. “This problem with the UAE is personal for Abbas. He sees anyone with ties to the UAE as his enemy.” Another prominent Palestinian official who has fallen foul of Abbas’ spat with the UAE is former Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Secretary-General Yasser Yasser Abed Rabbo. Rabbo was sacked from his position in June last year, accused in private by Abbas of disappearing for a month to go to the UAE, where the president believes he was conspiring with Bin Zayed against the PA. “But Rabbo wasn’t in the UAE, he was on a Greek island with his family,” said a source close to the former PLO secretary-general.  In June, Fatah demanded that Bin Zayed take a “clear position” on Khazen article, but the Abu Dhabi leader has not commented on it. Dahlan, Fayyad, and Rabbo all declined to comment on this article. Several aides to Abbas said they would not comment on the spat, arguing that anything they might say would “only make the situation worse”. However, Fatah official Muwaffaq Matter recently told Al Monitor that Dahlan has been seeking to cause problems between the PA and the UAE since his move to Abu Dhabi. “We are not concerned with any dispute with any Arab country,” the Fatah Revolutionary Council member said.  “However, Dahlan – who serves as a security consultant in the UAE, which contributed to strengthening his ties with Egypt – has been seeking, since he sought refuge to the UAE, to stir sedition between the PA leadership and the Arab countries, namely the UAE.” Rori Donaghy founded the Emirates Centre for Human Rights, which was the first independent organisation to focus on human rights abuse in the United Arab Emirates and he has had his work published in the Guardian’s Comment is Free, Huffington Post, Jadaliyya and Open Democracy.

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