Israel and the Middle East News Update

Thursday, March 28

Headlines: ● Egypt Urges Hamas to Show Restraint Ahead of Protests ● 14 Out of 15 UNSC States Condemn Golan Recognition ● US: UN Golan Force Has ‘Vital Role to Play’ ● Pompeo: Golan Recognition Will Promote Peace ● Rivlin: Israel is Jewish But Not Just for Jews ● Watchdog Links Gantz to Questionable Deal ● Disability Official Hits Likud Over Attacks on Gantz’s Sanity ● Eli Yishai Quits Election

Commentary: ● Times of Israel: “Netanyahu’s Gambit: Annexation for Protection” − By David Horovitz, Editor ● Al Monitor: “Gaza and Blue and White Put Netanyahu on the Defensive” − By Mazal Mualem, Senior Columnist

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 ● Aaron Zucker, Associate Editor

News Excerpts March 27, 2019

Ha’aretz Egypt Urges Hamas to Show Restraint Ahead of Protests The Egyptian security delegation, which arrived in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday evening, urged the Palestinian factions, and in particular Hamas, to maintain restraint towards the end of the week and to prevent an escalation during the planned demonstrations to mark the anniversary of the March of Return along the Gaza border fence on Tuesday. The delegation, led by two generals, Ayman Badia and Ahmad Abdelkhaliq, have been holding intensive discussions with Israel and Hamas leaders to try and prevent the situation from further escalating.

Jerusalem Post 14 Out of 15 UNSC States Condemn Golan Recognition The US was alone at the United Nations Security Council, as the 14 other member states condemned its recognition of Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights during an emergency meeting held late Wednesday night in New York. Just as the debate began, Israel launched an aerial strike against an Iranian ammunitions depot near Aleppo in Syria. Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said, “no nation in the world would give up strategic land to its most dangerous enemy.”

Associated Press US: UN Golan Force Has ‘Vital Role to Play’ The US said Wednesday the U.N. peacekeeping force on the Golan has “a vital role to play in preserving stability between Israel and Syria,” an assurance that the Trump administration’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the strategic plateau won’t affect its operation. Acting U.S. Ambassador Jonathan Cohen told an emergency meeting of the Security Council the force’s mandate to ensure that the area of separation between Syria and Israel “is a buffer zone free from any military presence or activities” is of “critical strategic and security importance.”

Ha’aretz Pompeo: Golan Recognition Will Promote Peace Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday that the Trump administration’s Golan decision will promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Pompeo made the remark during an appearance before the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee. He refused, however, to say whether the administration’s peace plan will include the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel, and said only that the administration will offer “new ideas.”

Ha’aretz Rivlin: Israel is Jewish But Not Just for Jews Israel's President Reuven Rivlin said Thursday that Israel must be "a democratic and Jewish state - not democratic only for Jews" and warned there is no democracy without a free press. "In the era of social media and fake news, where every person becomes a self-proclaimed journalist, journalistic standards are critical," he said. Rivlin added that the mainstream media must maintain standards that have been abandoned - fairness, fact checking, proportionality. He added that when things are published without differentiating between what is true and what is false, between reality and imagination, free press cannot exist.

Associated Press Watchdog Links Gantz to Questionable Deal An Israeli watchdog agency says it has found “significant failings” in the Israel Police’s dealings with a company reported to be a failed startup once headed by prime minister hopeful Benny Gantz. The State Comptroller said Wednesday that the police’s acquisition of nearly $14 million of technology from a company in 2016 violated standard procedures. According to the report, police waived a public tender and granted the unnamed company the contract. The report doesn’t specify the company or Gantz, but various Israeli news outlets identified it as Fifth Dimension, whose former CEO is Gantz.

Jerusalem Post Disability Official Hits Likud Over Attacks on Gantz’s Sanity Likud campaign ads that seek to portray Gantz as mentally ill drew rebuke Wednesday, including from Gantz himself and from the State of Israel’s disabilities commissioner. It was not the first time Likud has raised hackles over campaign ads that appear to mock disabilities. “Over the past few days we’ve seen a worrying trend in the election campaign and in media discourse that will severely affect the equality of the disabled in Israel” after Election Day, disability equality commissioner Avrami Torem wrote in a letter to the chairman of the Central Elections Committee, Supreme Court Justice Hanan Melcer.

Jerusalem Post Eli Yishai Quits Election Eli Yishai dropped his Yahad Party election campaign on Wednesday in what will be seen as the death knell for his political career. Yahad, which was only ever a political tool for Yishai to return to the Knesset after he stormed out of Shas in 2014, was consistently polling under the election threshold. In 2015, the party ran in a union with the far-right Otzma Yehudit and narrowly failed to make it into Knesset, receiving just under the 3.25% of the vote needed.

Times of Israel – March 27, 2019 Netanyahu’s Gambit: Annexation for Protection By David Horovitz, Editor

● Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s curtailed visit to the US was dominated by the escalation in violence spurred by a Hamas rocket attack early Monday that leveled a home in central Israel, and by the landmark White House meeting the same day at which US President Donald Trump formally conferred US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Somewhat overshadowed were comments made by Netanyahu pointing to his intention to permanently retain all or parts of the disputed West Bank. Behind the scenes at AIPAC, however, Israeli and American sources close to the two leaderships indicated that Netanyahu does indeed have partial annexation very much in mind if he is re-elected prime minister on April 9.

● Soon after the White House ceremony at which Trump signed a proclamation that “the United States recognizes that the Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel,” a jubilant Netanyahu told reporters that the US move underlined “a very important principle in international life: When you start wars of aggression, [and] you lose territory, do not come and claim it afterwards. It belongs to us.” Later, near the end of the journey home, he was more specific, telling the traveling press on his plane: “Everyone says you can’t hold an occupied territory, but this proves you can. If occupied in a defensive war, then it’s ours.”

● Immediately realizing that Netanyahu may have been citing Trump’s Golan recognition as ostensible justification for potential annexation in the West Bank — “occupied territory,” as Netanyahu termed it, captured “in a defensive war” — US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hurried to clarify that the Golan Heights situation was unlike any other, and no precedent for further such steps. Asked at a press briefing whether the president’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan — where Israel had extended Israeli law in 1981, in a move tantamount to annexation — sets “a precedent that powerful countries can actually overtake land over international law,” Pompeo responded emphatically in the negative. “The answer is absolutely not,” the secretary replied. “This is an incredibly unique situation. Israel was fighting a defensive battle to save its nation [when it conquered the plateau in 1967], and it cannot be the case that a UN resolution [requiring that it relinquish the territory to Syria] is a suicide pact.”

● Nonetheless, the Israeli and American sources with whom I spoke set out a post-election scenario in which Netanyahu would indeed seek to annex at least the major settlement blocs — such as the Etzion Bloc, Ma’aleh Adumim and Ariel — and to do so, ideally, with some degree of American backing. In so doing, it should be noted, Netanyahu could consider himself to be drawing upon widespread Israeli support: A Haaretz poll this week found 42% backing for full or partial annexation of the West Bank. (This was broken down into 27% for full annexation, and 15% for annexation of Area C — some 60% of the territory. The poll did not ask respondents about the less dramatic annexation of only the major settlement blocs. Only 28% said they opposed any annexation. About a quarter of those polled were non-Jewish Israelis.) 4

● Moreover, The Times of Israel was given to understand, the prime minister may seek to dangle the prospect of annexing the major settlement blocs — widely advocated in his Likud party and by parties to his right such as The New Right and the Union of Right Wing Parties — as an incentive for supportive MKs to ensure that his hold on the prime ministership not be curtailed by the imminent threat of criminal charges being filed against him. In other words, Netanyahu could explicitly or implicitly encourage MKs who want to see partial annexation of the West Bank to support legislation that would protect him from prosecution while in office. (Netanyahu is facing fraud and breach of trust charges in three cases, and bribery charges in one of them, pending a hearing. He denies any wrongdoing.)

● In a television interview on Channel 12 news on Saturday night, Netanyahu initially dismissed the notion that he would seek or support legislation making him immune from prosecution so long as he is prime minister. Seconds later, when asked to pledge that he would not do so, he backtracked to say he didn’t know, and then finally said he didn’t “believe” he would seek or back such legislation. The Israeli and American sources noted the immense success Netanyahu has enjoyed in winning irreversible and hard-to-reverse gains from Trump: the president’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; his relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; his withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal; and this week’s US recognition of Israeli sovereignty on the Golan. After the elections, the sources noted, focus would quickly shift to the Israeli-Palestinian peace proposal on which the administration has long been working.

● Unsurprisingly, The Times of Israel was given to understand, the plan being finalized by a Trump team that includes the president’s senior adviser (and son-in-law) Jared Kushner, Trump’s special representative Jason Greenblatt, and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has seen a variety of formulations considered — some of which would be almost certain to be rejected by the Palestinian leadership, and others that might be less unpalatable. In an address to AIPAC on Tuesday, Ambassador Friedman passionately set out an approach that, if it is reflected in the Trump proposal, is likely to be swiftly rejected by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. (The PA president has in any case preemptively dismissed the US plan, and has been boycotting the Trump administration since it recognized Jerusalem in December 2017.)

● Expressing fears that a subsequent US administration would not appreciate “the existential risk to Israel if Judea and Samaria are overcome by terrorism in the manner that befell the Gaza Strip after the IDF withdrew from this territory,” Friedman stressed the imperative for Israel to maintain overall security control in the West Bank — a need that was also stressed during his AIPAC speech by Netanyahu’s main rival, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, and that has long been a cornerstone of Netanyahu’s policy. Asked Friedman: “Can we leave this [issue of peacemaking and the Palestinian conflict] to an administration that may not understand the need for Israel to maintain overriding security control of Judea and Samaria and a permanent defense position in the Jordan valley?”

● By making clear that the Trump administration is deeply empathetic to the idea that Israel must maintain overall security control in the West Bank, a stance that necessarily prevents fully independent Palestinian statehood, Friedman indicated — though he did not explicitly say this — that the imminent Trump peace proposal would not provide for a two-state solution, and would thus be sure to be rejected by the Palestinians. (Incidentally, this week’s Haaretz poll found support for the two-state solution among Israelis to be a mere 34%.) If Abbas does reject the plan, Netanyahu would likely publicly reiterate his repeated conviction that Abbas is not a viable peace partner, and, the sources said, move to annex the settlement blocs.

● Pompeo’s comments on Tuesday suggested that the US would not endorse such a move. Friedman’s AIPAC speech the same day, by contrast, left open the possibility that the US could endorse it, as the ambassador pleaded for “more progress” in areas where Israel and this administration see eye-to-eye. “Can we leave this [issue of peacemaking and the Palestinian conflict] to an administration that may not understand that in the Middle East, peace comes through strength, not just through words on a paper?” Friedman asked his audience. “Can we run the risk that one day the government of Israel will lament, why didn’t we make more progress when US foreign policy was in the hands of President Trump, Vice President Pence, Secretary Pompeo, Ambassador Bolton, Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt, and even David Friedman? How can we do that?”

● “The answer,” Friedman went on, “is, we can’t. We will continue to work with the Israeli government, with the Palestinians, with other regional players, to pursue peace, recognizing that the diversity and strength of opinions on this subject suggests there will be some turbulence along the way. We will continue to pursue peace, because we believe we can be trusted to have the correct perspective and approach.” Friedman, a longtime and proud supporter of the settlement enterprise, then concluded that section of his address with a plea: “To all of you here, to all those who may be listening to this speech in the future, to all who love Israel and support the unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel, work with us, stay with us, pray with us for peace in the Holy Land.” If Friedman’s speech is anything to go by, one American source suggested to The Times of Israel, “the next [Trump] tweet will be to recognize Israel annexing the settlement blocs.”

Al Monitor – March 27, 2019 Gaza and Blue and White Put Netanyahu on the Defensive By Mazal Mualem Senior Columnist

● A short video of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking on a runway March 25 as he prepared to return to Israel from Washington highlights the concern he felt about losing control of his election campaign. Journalists tailed Netanyahu as he walked with his wife Sara toward the stairs to his plane, eager to get an update or a comment on Israel’s military strike in Gaza. The problem for Netanyahu was that earlier that day, a rocket fired from Gaza had hit a home in Mishmeret, a village in the center of Israel, striking fear among every Israeli. Netanyahu was frustrated that he had to cut his festive visit to Washington short. He raged at the journalists that from his perspective, they had not given sufficient coverage to President Donald Trump’s announcement recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. “People will settle the score with you for not giving it more than a minute of coverage,” Netanyahu warned. “But historically, this was huge.” It was only after the reporters pleaded with him that he agreed to make some general comments about Gaza.

● Up to that point, Netanyahu’s election campaign had met all its objectives despite the various criminal investigations into his dealings. He had prepared for the election for about a year. Netanyahu was convinced that the investigations would end with his indictment, so he primed his supporters accordingly, claiming that the various law enforcement agencies were conspiring to build a case against him. He even went so far as to try to delegitimize the country's police commissioner and the attorney general, both of whom he had appointed. The strategy worked. After Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced on Feb. 28 that he was considering indicting the prime minister for bribery, fraud and violation of trust, Netanyahu barely took a hit in the polls. He believed that his campaign was in control of the situation, while the rival Blue and White party was declining in popularity due to problems with its campaign strategy. At that exact moment, however, anything that could go wrong for Netanyahu actually did.

● The number two member of Blue and White, Yair Lapid, took control of his party’s campaign around mid-March and for the first time managed to attach a label of corruption that stuck to Netanyahu because of the German submarine deal (though it should be noted that Netanyahu has not been investigated or indicated in that case). An orchestrated campaign insinuating that Netanyahu had sold out the country’s security succeeded in doing what Mandelblit's threat of an indictment did not. The verbal campaign by Blue and White's leaders linked the enormous personal profit that Netanyahu earned from holding shares in a steel company, which had an indirect connection to the submarine provider, to the submarine investigation, Case 3000. The combination of greed and harming state security did exactly what it was intended to do — force Netanyahu to switch from offense to defense. For a while, things looked so bad that voters began abandoning the Likud. A few days ago, official polls showed the Blue and White gathering momentum, and the Likud getting weaker. Netanyahu's own polls also pointed to a problem.

● After four years of boycotting Israeli media outlets deemed insufficiently right wing, Netanyahu decided to sit for an interview with Channel 12 News. In doing so, Netanyahu sought to stop the ominous trend in the polls and prevent his party from growing even weaker. His spokespeople informed Channel 12's news editors of Netanyahu's desire to be interviewed only half an hour before the prime minister surprised everyone by showing up at the studio. The March 23 interview made for fascinating television. The interviewers showed no mercy, pummeling Netanyahu with penetrating questions. There were no softballs. They refused to let him off easy. Netanyahu actually seemed tense. He was not at his best when questioned by the journalist Keren Marciano. Nevertheless, the episode ended with Netanyahu shoring up his base and halting the Likud's downward slide.

● In the interview, Netanyahu showed his supporters that he would fight to defend his reputation. He even announced that he would file a libel suit against the Blue and White leadership for what he called their “blood libel” against him regarding the submarine scandal. Netanyahu is yet to follow through, but his bluster has succeeded. It was important for Netanyahu to put the submarine scandal behind him before leaving for Washington on March 24. He wanted to indulge in the election gift that Trump was about to give him without the submarine scandal dogging him to the White House. The visit to Washington had been planned for months. The historic US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, with a stopover at AIPAC’s annual conference to deliver a speech, was supposed to be one of the highlights of Netanyahu’s campaign. Then came the morning of March 25. Just a few hours before Netanyahu was scheduled to meet with his buddy Trump, a single rocket from Gaza ruined his election celebration in Washington. From that moment on, American recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights was relegated to the inside of the newspapers. All television news covered was the escalation from Gaza, and Netanyahu, who is also defense minister, spent many long hours in Washington on the phone to Israel. He had to decline Trump's festive state dinner and forego his speech to AIPAC. Forced instead to return to Israel, he was fuming and bitter.

● Just two weeks before the April 9 election, Gaza is, once again, stuck like a bone in Netanyahu’s craw. “Mr. Security” had done everything he could in the last year to contain an escalation in the south and avoid a large-scale military campaign. Now he finds himself under siege from the right, led by the chairman of the New Right, Naftali Bennett, and the chairman of Yisrael Beitenu, Avigdor Liberman. Both are attacking him mercilessly for adhering to what they consider to be lax policy toward Hamas and Gaza. Fine, they also want to get elected, and their poll numbers are hardly promising, and some of their supporters are in the Likud camp. Netanyahu is worried that another entanglement in Gaza could reshuffle the deck but not in his favor.

● Since Netanyahu is also defense minister, there is no one to share the criticism being aimed at him. As Israel’s most experienced campaigner, he was the first to realize that whatever has happened in the election campaign until now is no longer relevant. It’s a whole new ball game,

and his reaction to events in Gaza will undoubtedly determine the electoral outcome. The days leading up to April 9 could be lethal to Netanyahu’s image as Mr. Security, particularly now that he is facing off against a powerful party, Blue and White, led by generals. “It all looks too good to be true,” a Likud minister requesting confidentiality told Al-Monitor 10 days ago in response to Netanyahu’s high standing in the polls. Even he never imagined that so much could start to go wrong.