Israel and the Middle East News Update

Monday, February 20

Headlines:

, Jordan and Egypt Secretly Met for Peace Last Year  At Secret Summit, Netanyahu Offered Settlement Freeze  Herzog: Netanyahu Ran Away From Historic Opportunity  Saudi Arabia and Israel Issue Twin Warnings on Iran  Saudi FM urges Progress Toward Israeli-Arab Peace  Jewish leader Urges Trump to Act Against Anti-Semitism  : Israeli Threats to Our Sovereignty will Meet Appropriate Response

Commentary:

 Yedioth Ahronoth: “After his Magical Meeting with Trump, Real life Awaits Netanyahu”  By Sima Kadmon Columnist at Yediot Ahronoth  New York Times: “A Settler’s View of Israel’s Future”  By Yishai Fleisher, international spokesman of the Jewish community of

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 February 20, 2017 Reuters Israel, Jordan and Egypt Secretly Met for Peace Last Year German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to cancel a joint summit with Israel's government, scheduled for May 10 in . German and Israeli sources say her dissatisfaction at the Israel's new law to expropriate private Palestinian lands, enacted in last week. An Israeli source who reported hearing massive anger over the law and said he had heard from German officials that in response to the law's enactment, the German government had launched a number of initiatives, both publically and in diplomatic channels, to express its dismay at the legislation. See also, “REPORT: NETANYAHU REJECTED PEACE PLAN PROPOSED BY KERRY AT SECRET 2016 MEETING” (Jerusalem Post)

Ha’aretz At Secret Summit, Netanyahu Offered Settlement Freeze As part of the five-point plan that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented at the secret summit in Aqaba a year ago, as reported in Haaretz Sunday, the prime minister proposed to freeze construction outside the large settlement blocs in the . According to a former U.S. official and an Israeli source familiar with the details of the summit, attended by Jordan’s King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Netanyahu requested in return to get American recognition of construction within the settlement blocs. See also, “At secret summit, Netanyahu said to have offered freeze outside settlement blocs” (Times of Israel)

Ha’aretz Herzog: Netanyahu Ran Away From Historic Opportunity Opposition leader Isaac Herzog accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of running away from an "historic" opportunity in 2016 that could have changed the Middle East, when that latter refused to accept a secret peace plan presented by former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Herzog learned of the summit already at the beginning of March 2016, a few days after it took place. The summit served as the basis for talks he conducted at the time with Netanyahu over the forming of a unity government. These did not prosper, after Netanyahu preferred to bring Yisrael Beiteinu into the government and appoint Avigdor Lieberman as defense minister. "The paper would have changed the Middle East, and in the end, the one who ran away was Netanyahu," Herzog told Channel 10.See also, “Herzog: Netanyahu 'ran away' from peace initiative” (Arutz 7)

Jerusalem Post Saudi Arabia and Israel Issue Twin Warnings on Iran Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir each highlighted Iran as the main threat to regional stability on Sunday at the Munich Security Conference but fell short of saying they would cooperate to thwart Tehran. Highlighting the extent to which the two countries’ views of Iran concur, each speaker cast Iran as a threat to the existence of his country; said the 2015 nuclear agreement had not moderated its behavior; and called for a tough international role – including economic pressure – to confront the Islamic Republic’s ambitions. See also, “Saudi Arabia, Israel present de facto united front against Iran” (Reuters)

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Times of Israel Saudi FM urges Progress Toward Israeli-Arab Peace Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said he is optimistic that Arabs and Israelis can reach a peace deal in 2017. Speaking four days after US President and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at a White House press conference about the possibilities of a regional peace agreement, Adel al-Jubeir told delegates at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday that the contours of an Israeli-Palestinian accord were clear, and that Saudi Arabia and other Arab states would work to bring it to fruition. “I believe progress can be made in the Arab Israel conflict, if there is a will to do so,” he said. “We know what the settlement looks like, if there is just the political will to do so. And my country stands ready with other Arab countries to work to see how we can promote that.” See also, “ Al-Jubeir: Iran is the main sponsor of global terror” (Al Arabiya)

Ynet News Jewish leader Urges Trump to Act Against Anti-Semitism A top American Jewish leader urged US President Donald Trump to speak out against anti-Semitism amid a surge in harassment of Jews in the US. Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, spoke in Jerusalem on Sunday, saying that "I think that the president helps set the tone for a country." Despite Trump's flippant remarks recently made to a Haredi reporter's question on rising anti-Semitism in the United States, Hoenlein said: "I'm hopeful that what he said about ... addressing hate and racism of all kinds in American society will be translated into clear action." American Jews have experienced a sharp rise in anti-Semitism over the course of the presidential campaign and this year. Among the incidents, Jewish centers in 27 states and Canada received telephone bomb threats last month. See also, “REGIONAL COOPERATION WITH ISRAEL IS GROWING, SAYS HOENLEIN” (Jerusalem Post)

Reuters Lebanon: Threats to Our Sovereignty will Meet Response Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Saturday that any Israeli attempt to violate Lebanon's sovereignty would be met with the "appropriate response", in a statement released by his office. "Any attempt to hurt Lebanese sovereignty or expose the Lebanese to danger will find the appropriate response," the statement said. It said Aoun was reacting to recent remarks in a letter at the United Nations by Israel's U.N. ambassador, which amounted to a "masked attempt to threaten security and stability" in southern Lebanon, but did not say what the remarks were. Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said on Thursday that all of Lebanon would be a target if Hezbollah fired on Israel. Aoun's comments also followed warnings this week by the leader of the armed Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah, a political ally of the president, against any Israeli aggression. See also, “Lebanese president: Israeli threats to sovereignty will meet 'appropriate response'” (Ynet News)

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Yedioth Ahronoth– February 19, 2017 After his Magical Meeting with Trump, Real Life Awaits Netanyahu The joy in the Right over Wednesday’s White House meeting may be premature, as there is no guarantee that what the US president said last week will still be valid tomorrow. The prime minister has no cause for celebration either—the free hand he received puts him in a Catch-22.

By Sima Kadmon Columnist at Yediot Ahronoth

 If there was a way to monitor Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mental state during his press conference with US President Donald Trump, we would see a declining gradient on a graph, from high tension to a great relief.  The fact that Netanyahu got exactly what he wanted from the American president is indisputable. One state, two states (Coffee? Tea? It doesn’t matter, whatever is easiest for you)—that is the exact attitude Netanyahu would like to hear from an American president.Someone who hasn’t got a clue what it’s all about, who is likely unfamiliar with the map of Israel before 1967 and doesn’t know where the disputed lands are, and whose understanding of the issues on the agenda is about as deep as the length of his short temper.  I apologize to all of those who were so excited by Trump last Wednesday. To me, he still seems as ignorant and shallow as he was throughout his entire campaign. An egocentric, slipshod and inarticulate person, who has no idea what his opinions are on each of the issues on the agenda, and worse—what his opinions will be tomorrow.  He is someone who is engaged in how his views make him look, rather than in the really important stuff. Only a person like that can decide to hold his first press conference with the Israeli prime minister before sitting down to talk to him, because everything has all been agreed before anything has been discussed, and anyway, he could always change, deny, talk about false truth or about alternative facts and blame, always blame, the media. In other words, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah is probably right: The world’s nations, including Israel and the Palestinians, will only benefit from having an idiot in the White House, as Nasrallah referred to him.  But beneath the mutual flattery, the Trump décor and the common goal the two leaders saw before their eyes—to prove former President Barack Obama’s insignificance—the two sides conveyed pretty clear messages. Netanyahu, who tried to avoid in any way saying what Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett wanted to hear—in other words, abandoning the Bar-Ilan speech and the two-states-for-two-people idea—spoke about recognizing a and Israeli security control of the entire area.  On Trump’s part, we can talk about three main messages, for now at least, and without committing to what the messages will be tomorrow: He wants a deal, it doesn’t matter what deal, that both sides will agree on. The Saudi initiative, the regional peace which has been discussed for years, and which Israel had a unique opportunity to try to reach after Operation Protective Edge, is now on the agenda. And he, Trump, expects a “holdback” in settlements. Trump said that halfheartedly, only when he was asked about it directly by the hostile media. 4

 So if you heard joyous sounds, like you sometimes hear during a soccer game when an unusual goal is struck, those were the sounds of the Right. And they have a good reason to make those sounds: Not only have they managed to trap Netanyahu in their demands, now Trump has done it as well in his declarations.  I don’t want to spoil the party for Bennett and his partners, but they should pay attention to the fact that even before the Trump-Netanyahu meeting, CIA Director Mike Pompeo met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. That meeting in Ramallah could indicate what the American security establishment thinks about the need for bilateral negotiations. No more excuses  Upon his return to Israel, Netanyahu had to deal with his greatest fear—the need to decide. Up until now, he was able to say that he cannot withdraw from the Bar-Ilan speech, from the two- state vision, from the settlement construction freeze, because America is against it. Now, all the barriers have been removed. The prime minister will have to decide whether he is sticking to the vision he presented eight years ago in his Bar-Ilan speech, or adopting Bennett’s plan for the annexation of Judea and Samaria, which means, as President Reuven Rivlin said last week, granting citizenship to all Arab residents of Judea and Samaria.  Netanyahu is a much more intelligent, experienced and sensible than Trump. He knows how the world will respond if he decides to implement what the American president is allowing him to implement. After all, he was the one who needed the barriers placed by the previous administration, even more than Obama wanted to place those barriers. It was his excuse for the freeze, for the inaction.  What will he say now to all those who want to build, annex, keep controlling the Palestinians? Trump singlehandedly pulled the rug of excuses from under Netanyahu’s feet. Israel has no greater friend than Trump, Netanyahu said at the press conference in an exaggeration which matches this era so much. That remains to be seen.  Before his trip to the US, Netanyahu was petrified. He realized that, in a certain sense, his situation is worse than it was in the Obama era, because then he knew exactly what to expect. There was a reason why he tried to lower expectations among his ministers, those who demanded that he seize the historical opportunity. It’s no coincidence that his comments at the cabinet meeting, that Trump must not be confronted because of his character and complexity, were leaked.  I suggest that we remember that even during these euphoric days. Even if the visit was successful, it’s all in the short run. Trump is a total mystery, an unpredictable person, and there is no way of knowing what his stance will be tomorrow. The weeks that have passed since he entered the White House have only confirmed all the fears, that the man arrived completely unprepared. It’s unclear what Netanyahu feared the most—that Trump would return to the traditional stances of the American administration, two states and the 1967 borders with land swaps, or that he would say what he actually said at the White House press conference, that he was giving him a free hand.

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 He already did Netanyahu a disservice when he promised to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Who even wants that? Who needs the commotion that such a move would create—European Union sanctions, all hell breaking loose in the Arab world, an intifada?  Netanyahu is now in a situation of “damned if I do and damned if I don’t.” Any choice he makes could be problematic. The American reception was a dream that even he didn’t dream of. Sara turning into a princess, a pumpkin turning into a carriage, magical hours of slow dancing in a golden palace. There is no champagne in the world which could provide that same feeling of intoxication, the euphoria the Netanyahus experienced at the Trumps’ new home.  In the report Trump received about the investigations against Netanyahu, there was likely a special chapter about Mrs. Netanyahu. Trump studied it well. This chauvinist, who is infamous for his treatment of, and behavior towards, women doesn’t even treat his own wife with the nobility he showed our Sara.  But real life is not at the Blair House in Washington, crowding alongside the aggressive Trump and the beautiful Melania. Real life is here. And here, he has the right-wing camp to contend with, and it will demand that he seizes the opportunity he was given in full. And he also has the investigations, and the Likud ministers preparing for a change of government.  Netanyahu will discover that it’s all in his hands. Trump won’t lift a finger. He won’t push for a solution and won’t force Israel to reach an agreement. He has enough urgent matters on the agenda. What Netanyahu will have to do is the exact thing he doesn’t know how to do: Decide.

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New York Times– February 14, 2017 A Settler’s View of Israel’s Future By Yishai Fleisher, international spokesman of the Jewish community of Hebron  Last week, Israel’s Parliament passed a controversial bill that allows the government to retroactively authorize contested West Bank Jewish communities by compensating previous Palestinian land claimants. Opposition parties warn that this law could open Israel to prosecution at The Hague, and the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said, “Israel’s Parliament has just approved a law to legalize theft of Palestinian land.” This theme has been echoed recently at the Paris peace conference, in a United Nations Security Council resolution and by a major policy speech by then Secretary of State John Kerry, which all condemned settlements.  Israel never seems to have a good answer to accusations against the settlement enterprise. Whenever the claim that Israel stole Palestinian lands is heard, Israel’s answers inevitably are: “We invented the cellphone,” “We have gay rights,” “We fly to help Haiti after an earthquake.” Obvious obfuscation. And when pushed to explain why the much-promised two-state solution is perennially stuck, the response is always to blame Arab obstructionism.  This inability to give a straight answer is a result of 30 years of bad policy that has pressed Israel to create a Palestinian state in the historic Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria, which the world calls the West Bank. This policy has worked to legitimize the idea that the territory of Judea and Samaria is Arab land and that Israel is an intractable occupier. Today, as Israel is beginning to walk back the two-state solution, it is not easy to admit we were wrong; and many people’s careers are on the line. This is why Israel mouths the old party line, yet takes no steps toward making a Palestinian state a reality.  But for us settlers, the truth is clear: The two-state solution was misconceived, and will never come to pass, because Judea and Samaria belong to the Jewish people. Our right to this land is derived from our history, religion, international decisions and defensive wars. Jews have lived here for 3,700 years, despite repeated massacres, expulsions and occupations — by the Romans, Arabs, Crusaders and Ottomans. And the world recognized the Jewish people’s indigenous existence in this land in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the San Remo Accords of 1920.  When Israel declared independence in 1948, Jordan, along with five other Arab states, attacked Israel, occupied Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, and drove out Jewish residents. Again, in 1967, Jordan attempted to wipe out the Jewish State, but this time, Israel forced the Jordanian army back across the Jordan River. While the government of Israel was ambivalent about whether to retain the newly emancipated areas, the settler movement was not. We set about holding and developing the land, just like the pioneers of the Kibbutz movement.  Today, the estimated number of Arabs living in Judea and Samaria is 2.7 million, though some researchers dispute the data and argue that the figure is far lower. Yet the presence of these Arab residents alone does not warrant a new country. Arabs can live in Israel, as other minorities do, with personal rights, not national rights. But many Arabs reject that option because they do not recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish State, with or without settlements.

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 This pervasive intolerance was laid bare in the aftermath of Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, when Hamas seized control in 2007 and turned the territory into a forward base for jihad, starting three wars in seven years. As a result, most Israelis, however pragmatic, no longer believe in a policy of forfeiting land in hopes of getting peace in return. While a Hamas- controlled Gaza is now a reality, no Israeli wants an Islamic State of Palestine looking down at them from the strategic heights of Judea and Samaria.  Therefore, most settlers say without ambivalence that the two-state solution is dead, and the time has come for a discussion of new options by which Israel would hold onto the West Bank and eventually assert Israel sovereignty there, just as we did with the Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem. Yes, Israel will have to grapple with questions of the Arab population’s rights, and the issues of the country’s security and Jewish character, but we believe those questions can be worked out through the democratic process. At least five credible plans are on the table already.  The first option, proposed by former members of Israel’s Parliament Aryeh Eldad and Benny Alon, is known as “Jordan is Palestine,” a fair name given that Jordan’s population is generally reckoned to be majority Palestinian. Under their plan, Israel would assert Israeli law in Judea and Samaria while Arabs living there would have Israeli residency and Jordanian citizenship. Those Arabs would exercise their democratic rights in Jordan, but live as expats with civil rights in Israel.  A second alternative, suggested by Israel’s education minister, Naftali Bennett, proposes annexation of only Area C — the territory in the West Bank as defined by the Oslo Accords (about 60 percent by area), where a majority of the 400,000 settlers live — while offering Israeli citizenship to the relatively few Arabs there. But Arabs living in Areas A and B — the main Palestinian population centers — would have self-rule.  A third option, which dovetails with Mr. Bennett’s, is promoted by Prof. Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University, near Tel Aviv. His premise is that the most stable Arab entity in the Middle East is the Gulf Emirates, which are based on a consolidated traditional group or tribe. The Palestinian Arabs are not a cohesive nation, he argues, but are comprised of separate city- based clans. So he proposes Palestinian autonomy for seven non-contiguous emirates in major Arab cities, as well as Gaza, which he considers already an emirate. Israel would annex the rest of the West Bank and offer Israeli citizenship to Arab villagers outside those cities.  The fourth proposal is the most straightforward. Caroline Glick, a Jerusalem Post journalist, wrote in her 2014 book, “The Israeli Solution: A One State Plan for Peace in the Middle East,” that, contrary to prevailing opinion, Jews are not in danger of losing a demographic majority in an Israel that includes Judea and Samaria. New demographic research shows that thanks to falling Palestinian birth rates and emigration, combined with opposite trends among Jews, a stable Jewish majority of above 60 percent exists between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean (excluding Gaza); and this is projected to grow to about 70 percent by 2059.  Ms. Glick thus concludes that the Jewish State is secure: Israel should assert Israeli law in the West Bank and offer Israeli citizenship to its entire Arab population without fear of being outvoted. This very week, Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, announced his backing for the idea in principle. “If we extend sovereignty,” he said, “the law must apply equally to all.”

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 Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, similarly advocates for annexation and giving the Palestinians residency rights — with a pathway to citizenship for those who pledge allegiance to the Jewish State. Others prefer an arrangement more like that of Puerto Rico, a United States territory whose residents cannot vote in federal elections. Some Palestinians, like the Jabari clan in Hebron, want Israeli residency and oppose the Palestinian Authority, which they view as illegitimate and corrupt.  Finally, there is a fifth alternative, which comes from the head of the new Zehut party, Moshe Feiglin, and Martin Sherman of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. They do not see a resolution of conflicting national aspirations in one land and instead propose an exchange of populations with Arab countries, which effectively expelled about 800,000 Jews around the time of Israeli independence. In contrast, however, Palestinians in Judea and Samaria would be offered generous compensation to emigrate voluntarily.  None of these options is a panacea. Every formula has some potentially repugnant element or tricky trade-off. But Israeli policy is at last on the move, as the passing of the bill on settlements indicates.  Mr. Kerry’s mantra that “there really is no viable alternative” to the two-state solution is contradicted by its manifest failure. With a new American administration in power, there is a historic opportunity to have an open discussion of real alternatives, unhampered by the shibboleths of the past.

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