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Israel and the Middle East News Update

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Israel and the Middle East News Update Israel and the Middle East News Update Monday, November 30 Headlines: Ya’alon: No Need for West Bank Invasion, Targeted Assassinations Netanyahu Heads to Paris to Meet World Leaders Israel Suspends Contact with EU Bodies Over West Bank Labeling Russian Plane Entered Israeli-Controlled Zone Without Incident IDF Closes Third Radio Station for Broadcasting Incitement 17 Year-Old Palestinian Killed in Violent Demonstration IDF Gets Ready to Destroy Three Terrorist Homes Mossad Enraged After Bibi Hints at External Candidate for Agency Chief Commentary: Yedioth Ahronoth: “Regards from Medieval Times” By Nahum Barnea, Leading Israeli Journalist, Yedioth Ahronoth Ha’aretz: “No Way to Help the Palestinians” By Moshe Arens, Former Israeli Foreign and Defense Minister 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 November 30, 2015 Times of Israel Ya’alon: No Need for West Bank Invasion, Assassinations Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Sunday brushed off demands from politicians for a dramatic escalation in IDF operations in the West Bank to end the wave of terror attacks that has killed at least 20 Israelis over the past two months. Former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman, a longstanding critic of the government’s policy toward the West Bank and Gaza, on Saturday demanded a new policy of “decisive victory,” including targeted assassinations in the Gaza Strip against those inciting Palestinians to kill Israelis and ground incursions into Palestinian population centers similar to those that ended the Second Intifada in 2002’s Operation Defensive Shield. Ya’alon, who served as IDF chief of staff during Defensive Shield, rejected the demands as “sloganeering.” BICOM Netanyahu Heads to Paris to Meet World Leaders Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Paris today where he will meet several heads of government and state on the side-lines of a climate conference, including France’s President Francois Hollande and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The conference, COP21, has also become an opportunity for the world to show its solidarity with France following the Paris terror attacks earlier this month. However, he will also sit down for one-on-one meetings with the likes of Hollande and Putin, whose countries are taking an increasingly prominent role in Syria. See also, “Netanyahu Heads to Paris for Marathon Meetings with World Leaders” (Times of Israel) The Guardian Israel Suspends Contact w/ EU Bodies Over West Bank Labeling Israel has said it is suspending contact with European Union bodies involved in peace efforts with the Palestinians after the bloc started requiring exports from Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be labeled. On Sunday, the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, ordered the foreign ministry to carry out “a reassessment of the involvement of EU bodies in everything that is connected to the diplomatic process with the Palestinians”, a ministry statement said. See also, "Israel Suspends Diplomatic Contact with Some EU Bloc Bodies" (Wall Street Journal) Middle East Eye Russian Plane Entered Israeli-Controlled Zone Without Incident A Russian warplane recently entered Israeli-controlled airspace from Syria but the intrusion was resolved without incident, Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said Sunday. "There was a slight intrusion a mile deep by a Russian plane from Syria into our airspace, but it was immediately resolved and the Russian plane returned towards Syria…It was apparently an error by the pilot who was flying near the Golan." Yaalon recalled that Israel and Russia had made arrangements to avoid clashes over Syria, with the agreement said to include a "hotline" and information sharing. See also, “Israeli Defense Minister: Russia Also Violated Our Airspace” (Ha'aretz) 2 Ha’aretz IDF Closes Third Radio Station for Broadcasting Incitement The Israel Defense Forces closed another radio station in Hebron on early Sunday morning, the third closed by the army in the past month. The reason given by the IDF was that the station was broadcasting incitement to violence. Palestinian reports said large numbers of IDF troops in the Wadi al-Sir neighborhood of Hebron surrounded the building where Radio Dream is located. The soldiers broke into the building and stopped the broadcast. Station manager Taleb al-Jabari told local journalists that soldiers searched the station, confiscated equipment and caused a great deal of damage to the studios. They put the station out of operation and gave him a closure order for six months, said al-Jabari. See also, “Israel Shuts Down Palestinian Radio Station in Hebron for Incitement” (Jerusalem Post) Ma’ariv 17 Year-Old Palestinian Killed in Violent Demonstration Border Police troops killed a 17 year-old boy, Ayman al-bassi, yesterday evening during a violent demonstration in East Jerusalem’s Ras el-Amud neighborhood, according to a report from the Palestinian Health Ministry. A police spokesperson said that ten firebombs were thrown at the Border Police troops in the area. “The troops, who were facing a real threat to their lives, fired at the lower part of the body of a suspect who was seen with a burning firebomb, and the people throwing the firebombs fled,” said the spokesperson. Violent demonstrations continued in the area afterwards. See also, “Clashes Break Out in East Jerusalem, West Bank; Palestinians Report Teen Shot” (Jerusalem Post) Arutz Sheva IDF Gets Ready to Destroy Three Terrorist’s Homes IDF forces on Sunday night mapped out the homes of three Arab terrorists who recently committed brutal attacks, in preparatory steps to demolishing the homes as a means of deterrence. In the town of Al Fawar near Hevron in Judea, members of the elite Duvdevan special forces unit mapped the home of the terrorist Mohammed Ismail Mohammed Shubki, who committed the stabbing attack last Wednesday at Al Fawar Junction in which he seriously wounded a soldier. In another Hebron region town, members of the Nahshon Brigade mapped out the home of the terrorist Ta Hussein Ahmed Trada, who conducted a stabbing in Jerusalem on Sunday, and wounded a woman. Ynet News Mossad Enraged After Bibi Hints at External Candidate for Chief Israel's spy agency, the Mossad, was in the midst of an upheaval, after Netanyahu's candidate for the position of agency chief was revealed to be Ido Nehushtan, Israel's 16th air force chief. Nehushtan is in line to replace the agency's current chief, Tamir Pardo who is set to finish his term in January. A source with intimate knowledge of the race for Mossad chief stated that Nehushtan's name had been dropped in the hat for chief nearly a month ago by an official close to Netanyahu. The official claimed that Nehushtan was "very likely to" beat out the three candidates from within the agency: Rami Ben- Barak, Yossi Cohen, and the current deputy Mossad chief, N'. 3 Yedioth Ahronoth – November 30, 2015 Regards from Medieval Times By Nahum Barnea An American acquaintance of mine got up one morning after a sleepless night, read the newspapers, brought herself up to speed on the social networks, and told her husband in a minor state of panic: “The Middle Ages are making a comeback.” When he asked what she meant, she said: the massacres being committed by ISIS in Syria and Boko Haram in Africa; the terror attacks in Sinai and Paris; the knifing terror attacks in Israel and the territories; the xenophobia in Europe and the United States; the statements being made by contenders in the race to become the Republican Party’s presidential candidate. That is certainly quite a long inventory. Even if the Middle Ages aren’t really making a comeback—history repeats itself only in poems—it seems to me that millions of people, members of competing nations and religions, today yearn for the values that reigned in Europe during those dark days. The world is too complicated for them: they want it simple, basic, visceral and unambiguous. Either you submit to me on everything, or you’re to be sentenced to death. A large portion of the people who preach for a return to a better past wear the long robes of religious clerics. Some are Shiites, others are Sunnis, Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, Hindis—and also rabbis of our own. There is no point in writing at any length about them; the danger they pose to the wellbeing of human society, human dignity, to life itself, is clear and immediate. It is harder to measure the damage posed by the others, those who don’t dress as ayatollahs but who merely think like ayatollahs. The American presidential elections are less than a year away, and the two candidates currently leading in the polls in the Republican Party are a disgrace to the political system and the party in whose name they want to be elected. The entire free world turns its gaze to America. It hopes for a leader of vision it can stand behind. What have the Republicans offered? Donald Trump is an Oren Hazan who has made money. He is a rude, quick-tempered man who is addicted to the noise he manufactures as if it were a drug; Ben Carson is a Smotrich with a doctoral degree. His opinions are benighted, his ignorance is outrageous, his credibility is problematic. The possibility that one of those two men might hold the free world in the palm of their hand is suddenly no less frightening than ISIS’s sleeper cells in Molenbeek. The time machine has been working overtime in Israel as well. Instead of the government and the Knesset gaining control over the street, the street has gained control over them. MKs have been encouraging citizens to act in ways that are necessarily going to lead to manslaughter and murder.
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