Israel and the Middle East News Update

Monday, February 23

Headlines:  , Zionist Union Spar after Stabbing Attack  Palestinians Threaten to End Security Ties with  Kerry Says Deal Not Imminent as Iran, US Energy Chiefs Join Talks  Netanyahu ‘Astonished’ Over Continuing Nuclear Talks  Senior U.S. Official: White House Won't Boycott AIPAC Conference  Zionist Union Wins at Bellwether High School's Mock Election  Likud: If Bennett Weakens Us, We’ll Form Unity Government with Herzog  Comptroller Confirms Pre-Election Publication of Damning Housing Report

Commentary:  Ma’ariv: “Hara-Kiri”  By Ben Caspit  The Weekly Standard: “The Israeli Referendum”  By Elliott Abrams

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 February 23, 2015 Times of Israel Likud, Zionist Union Spar After Jerusalem Stabbing Attack The ruling Likud party and the Zionist Union, its main rival in the upcoming national elections, squabbled Sunday hours after a Palestinian teenager stabbed a Jewish man in Jerusalem. The incident was caught on camera and shows Jerusalem Mayor and his security team apprehending the attacker. After the attack, the Likud party published a post on Facebook in which it charged that should the Zionist form the next coalition, Hamas would operate in the heart of the Israeli capital since Livni was willing to consider dividing Jerusalem, according to the post. The post was then shared by Prime Minister Netanyahu which prompted an outcry by Zionist Union members who accused him of participating in incitement.

Ynet News Palestinians Threaten to End Security Ties with Israel The Palestinian president has threatened to stop security coordination with Israel if the country continues to withhold millions of dollars of Palestinian tax revenue, a senior Palestinian official said Sunday. Nabil Shaath said President Mahmoud Abbas warned European leaders on a trip to Europe last week that Palestinian officials would discuss the matter during a Palestinian central council meeting next week. Israel has withheld tax revenue from the Palestinians since they joined the International Criminal Court last month. Shaath said the withheld revenue amounts to $140 million per month for the last two months. Tax revenue accounts for about 70% of the Palestinians' budget. See also, “Jerusalem hits back at claims it is causing collapse of Palestinian Authority” (Jerusalem Post)

Al-Monitor Kerry says deal not imminent as Iran, US energy chiefs join talks The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Ali Akbar Salehi and US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz joined Iran nuclear negotiations in Geneva for the first time Feb. 21, raising expectations that talks had reached a critical point. US Secretary of State John Kerry, however, sought to tamp down expectations that Iran and six world powers were close to finalizing a preliminiary political agreement, telling reporters that there were still significant gaps. The expanded high-level Iranian delegation raised expectations for a possible outcome at the meeting, one month ahead of a March 24 deadline for reaching a political agreement on a final nuclear deal. See also, “Despite 2-hour meet, Kerry and Iran's Zarif fail to find common ground” (Reuters)

Times of Israel Netanyahu ‘Astonished’ Over Continuing Nuclear Talks Prime Minister Netanyahu on Sunday criticized the international community for negotiating with Iran while taking no steps to curb its sponsorship of global terrorism, as top American and Iranian diplomats attempted to hammer out a deal in Geneva. Speaking at the cabinet meeting, the prime minister said that it was “astonishing that even after the recent IAEA report determined that Iran is continuing to hide the military components of its nuclear program, the nuclear talks are proceeding.” See also, “Netanyahu slams Herzog for saying Iran not an existential threat” (Jerusalem Post) 2

Ha’aretz U.S. Official: White House Won't Boycott AIPAC Conference Despite the rift between Israeli Prime Minister and U.S. President Barack Obama, the U.S. administration has no intention of boycotting the upcoming convention of America's leading pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, a senior administration official said over the weekend. However, the official refrained from divulging the name or rank of the administration representative who will speak at the conference, though many believe it will be U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. The official's statements come in the wake of an AP report claiming the Obama administration is mulling ways "to undercut Netanyahu's upcoming trip to Washington and blunt his message that a potential nuclear deal with Iran is bad for Israel and the world." See also, “Ex-envoy to US: White House boycott of AIPAC tantamount to boycott of alliance with Israel” (Jpost)

Ynet News Zionist Union Wins at Bellwether High School's Mock Election The high school that predicted the 1977 elections upset and Yitzhak Rabin's victory in 1992, as well as 's big achievement in the 2013 elections, has predicted another upset in the 2015 elections. The students at Blich High School in Ramat Gan took part in a mock election on Sunday, giving the Zionist Union headed by Isaac Herzog and 32 percent of the votes. Lapid's party, , got 28 percent of the votes and ruling party the Likud only got 14 percent, placing it in third place. Over a 1,000 sophomores, juniors and seniors (10th-12th grade) took part in the mock election. Students were wearing T-shirts representing the different parties and several politicians arrived at the school to talk to the students.

NRG Likud: If Bennett Weakens Us, We’ll Form Unity Government The internal battle inside the right wing bloc, between the Likud and the Jewish Home, will have ramifications—or so Likud figures have recently threatened. The Likud has only made this threat in closed conversations up until now, although publicly Netanyahu has said that he will not approach Herzog-Livni to form a coalition. However, in closed conversations, Likud figures say that if the Jewish Home weakens Netanyahu’s party, this will force the Likud, against its will, to go to the Zionist Camp on the day after the elections and to propose the establishment of a unity government. See also, “Herzog: I won’t build outside settlement blocs” (Times of Israel)

BICOM Comptroller Confirms Publication of Damning Housing Report Israel’s State Comptroller Joseph Shapira confirmed yesterday that there will be no delay in publishing a report on Israel’s housing sector, making it available before next month’s general election. The report is expected to sharply criticize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s successive administrations on an issue of significant importance to the electorate. Following yesterday’s announcement, Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog commented that the housing crisis “is not a decree of fate, but rather the result of the ongoing unsuccessful policy of Netanyahu’s failed government.” See also, “Comptroller resists pressure from Likud to release report on housing” (Jerusalem Post)

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Ma’ariv – February 23, 2015 Hara-Kiri By Ben Caspit  “We’ve completely lost our grip,” whispered the whisperer, after getting his interlocutor to swear that he wouldn’t tell anyone. “Don’t quote me, but it seems to me that we’ve gone absolutely and completely mad here. It’s an insane tailspin, real vertigo. At this pace, we’re going to crash into the side of the mountain.” The person who made these remarks, a man who is at the heart of the Likud campaign, spoke (yesterday) about the new record levels of ridiculousness that the Likud campaign has reached or, more correctly, that the Netanyahu family has reached, in the past few days.  Let’s start from the beginning. Until not long ago, Netanyahu was running a brilliant campaign. He did so despite the fact that he wasn’t holding particularly good cards in his hand. He dictated the agenda and was able to surprise; he proved that he knew how to be “cool” and displayed a good sense of humor. He floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.  Then came the state comptroller’s report about the Prime Minister’s residences. At that point, when the family started to panic, everything began to run awry. The first mistake was the grotesque public relations video clip with the character who goes by the name of “Moshik Galamin.” It is clear today that that video cast in an even more ridiculous light on the imperial family’s (albeit crumbling) Byzantine Court.  The second colossal mistake was to pounce on Meni Naftali. The weekend polls proved that very few people, if any at all, were prepared to buy the unbelievable accusation that was aired by the prime minister (and his wife) of Israel, that their fired custodian is the one who forced them to eat expensive sushi until they burst, to order champagne as if there were no tomorrow, to fill the house with scented candles (at a cost of thousands of shekels), to spend hundreds of thousands of shekels on cleaning their empty home and so on and so forth. By the bye, they turned Meni Naftali into someone who no longer has anything to lose. Blaming Livni for the Terror Attack  … Incidentally, yesterday Netanyahu blamed Tzipi Livni for the attempted terror attack in Jerusalem. If that isn’t a case of him losing his grip, I don’t know what is.  Why is Livni to blame? Because “a few weeks ago she once again noted her support for dividing Jerusalem.” Ah, now it all makes sense. She said that, and along came a terrorist with a knife in order to prevent the division of the city or something like that. That’s what’s known as an insult to the public’s intelligence. When there is a terror attack in Jerusalem after six consecutive years in which Netanyahu has been in power, the proper address for complaints is the prime minister, the public security minister and the defense minister.  But the worst mistake that Netanyahu and his emissaries have made in the past two days was their decision to attack the poor state comptroller, Justice Yossi Shapira. Is anyone going to buy the ludicrous argument that “the prime minister is being persecuted?”

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 … No one is persecuting him. With all due respect, it wasn’t Noni Mozes who wrote the state comptroller’s report about the real estate market and it wasn’t the Left that dictated this issue. The state comptroller decided on this report long ago, the date was set well in advance (well before the decision was made to call early elections).  The state comptroller’s job is to “review the government’s performance,” and the public is entitled to be fully informed before it goes to the polling stations. The Likud, with its shameless screeching choir, has only proved to the public before the publication of this report who is afraid of its publication and, as such, who is to blame. The truth is that there’s no longer any need for the report to be published. It is less severe that one might imagine (after all, it was written by Yossi Shapira), but no one is going to know that anymore.  This report will place emphasis for the first time since the election campaigns were begun on social and economic issues. Netanyahu has nothing to say for himself on those issues. He is going to be exposed in his disgrace. Instead of us talking in the next number of days about his (catastrophic) trip to Washington, we are going to talk about the (no less catastrophic) trip of young Israelis to buying an apartment. Netanyahu is no longer dictating the agenda. On the contrary. He is being dragged along. While screaming and yelling.  Let’s add to all that the incipient criminal investigation into Binyamin and ’s conduct, and we’ll find ourselves in their ultimate nightmare scenario. It seems to me that even won’t be able to avoid giving the right instructions. The chief of police also spoke about that yesterday, on the record. Anyone who hires the professional holier-than-thou lawyer, Jacob Weinroth, knows that he’s in deep trouble. Apropos of Weinroth, allow me to conclude with an anecdote. When the bottles affair broke (do you remember?)… the prime minister’s aides rushed to present an affidavit by Mrs. Netanyahu’s former driver in which he said that it was he, and not she, who oversaw the return of the bottles, and that she was not connected to the affair in the least. Okay.  Now that Weinroth has entered the fray, he wrote an erudite legal opinion that was submitted to the attorney general and which put forward the following winning defense: Even if it’s true, wrote Weinroth, Sara Netanyahu is the person who found and returned the bottles and, therefore, by law, they are her property, and not state property. Hold on a moment, what about the poor driver? Wasn’t he the person responsible just a moment ago? Could it be that she took away his bottles? How miserable.

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The Weekly Standard – February 21, 2015 The Israeli Referendum By Elliott Abrams  Everyone knows that the coming Israel election, to be held March 17, is a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “It becomes clear that the election on 17 March is increasingly seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s time in office,” wrote London’s Guardian. The Economist quoted Israel’s Channel 2 saying, “At the end of the day, these elections are all about a referendum on Bibi.” The Associated Press proclaimed, “The coming Israeli election amounts to a referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu.” And the Washington Post told readers that “political analysts and journalists were calling this election the ‘Bibi referendum.’”  There are many more examples of this trope, and they are all wrong. This election in Israel is instead a referendum on Isaac “Buji” Herzog, the opposition candidate for prime minister.  Netanyahu has served as prime minister for ten years and been in politics for decades. He is a known quantity, and his poll numbers are not good. As Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher found out, ten years is a long time and one builds up critics, opponents, and enemies. The public gets tired. There are almost inevitably scandals. A December survey “asked respondents whether they want Netanyahu to remain prime minister after the vote. Sixty percent said no.”  So why does this not mean that Netanyahu is done for, and that Herzog will be the next PM? Because Israeli voters do not trust him—yet. Recent polls have shown between 18 and 24 percent of Israelis are undecided—the swing voters who will decide the election.  Though Herzog is 54 years old, is the son of Israel’s sixth president, has been in the since 2003, and has served as a cabinet minister several times, he’s not a well-known quantity. He has led his Labor Party only since November 2013. One year ago a third of Israeli voters knew little about him, and even now twenty percent “say they don’t have an opinion of him or have never heard of him,” according to the Times of Israel. That number will continue to decline as the election nears, but it is amazingly high for the man leading the main opposition party.  Israel is beset with security challenges: Iran and Hezbollah have troops fighting in , ISIS spreads nearby, Iran’s nuclear weapons program is advancing, Hamas runs Gaza, and of course the administration in Washington is hostile to Israel while accommodating to Iran.  For undecided Israeli voters the question is not “do I love Bibi,” it is “can I trust Buji to protect this country?” Herzog’s boyish looks and lack of charisma do not help him, nor does the fact that his IDF service was not in a combat unit. The Labor Party has usually addressed these security worries by having a general lead the ticket, and it won under former chiefs of staff Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak. It has been thirty years since Labor won with a civilian. That was Shimon Peres in 1984—but even then Labor did not get enough seats to form a government on its own and had to join in a coalition with Likud.

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 So it is fair to say that the last time a Labor Party civilian won a clear mandate to rule without the right was with Golda Meir in 1969—ancient history for most Israelis.  One possible outcome this year is a repetition of the 1984 outcome—a very close election leading to a Labor/Likud deal and a grand coalition, where Herzog would perhaps serve as deputy prime minister and foreign minister under Netanyahu. Or, Herzog may persuade voters one way or the other—to trust him and give him the Knesset seats needed to form a governing coalition, or to turn away and stick with Bibi despite whatever complaints they may have.  The race is on: will Herzog define himself in the next 3 weeks as solid and reliable, or will Netanyahu define him as a nice young fellow who simply isn’t tough enough to be prime minister of Israel?  It’s a referendum all right, but on Buji more than Bibi.

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