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  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 ”  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)

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Ha’aretz IDF Closes Third Radio Station for Broadcasting Incitement The 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'.

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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 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. Public discourse is awash with racist comments. The prime minister announced last week that he would not tolerate racist comments, and forgot that his racist, mendacious and inciting speech on Election Day is what brought about the election to Knesset of the man in the 30th slot of the ’s list, Oren Hazan. Thanks to Netanyahu’s disgraceful gambit, we’ve been blessed with Hazan.

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 We are justifiably taken aback when we hear Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s belligerent remarks; we justifiably feel aversion to the threats that are aired by Russian President Vladimir Putin. They have both gotten mixed up in acts that jeopardize the world’s safety (and indirectly so, Israel’s safety). They are part of the world’s backsliding process to different times. But the cabinet ministers in the current Israeli government view Putin and Erdogan as role models to be emulated.  Netanyahu recently remembered that he promised to change the system of government in Israel within 100 days of being elected but forgot. He quickly appointed Minister Yariv Levin to head a committee to oversee changing the system of government. He didn’t ask Levin, a self- declared enemy of the Supreme Court and of the checks and balances in Israeli democracy, what kind of regime he’d like to see ushered in here. Or maybe he did ask him. It is hard to say which scenario is more troubling.  Ostensibly, we’re immobile: the country is mired in the swamp of its own comfort zone, in the eternal status quo. But in practice we keep sliding back. One of the bumper stickers that has become very popular in Israel in recent years reads: “We’ve got no one to count on except our Father in Heaven.”  When I first came across that bumper sticker, I was upset: how could members of such an ambitious and creative society that is brimming with talented people, a society that has been coping on its own with enemies that seek to annihilate it, come to embrace such a weak, apathetic, despondent slogan? On second thought, I might have misread the slogan: the first half is the important half: We’ve got no one to count on. Nahum Barnea is a leading Israeli journalist for Yedioth Ahronoth. In 2007, he was awarded the Israel Prize.

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Ha’aretz – November 30, 2015 No Way to Help the Palestinians

The industrial zones in Judea and Samaria, whose products are to be labeled in Europe, do more good for the Palestinian economy than the EU does.

By Moshe Arens  Although there are many causes for the recent upsurge in Palestinian violence, there is no doubt that poor economic conditions are one of them. Over 25 percent of the Palestinian labor force in Judea and Samaria is unemployed. The GDP per capita there is about $4000 compared to Israel’s $25,000. The average wage there is about 87 shekels a day.  Aware of this situation the Israeli government is considering increasing the number of Palestinians who are allowed to work in Israel in the hope of improving economic conditions in Judea and Samaria. Over 100,000 such Palestinian workers are currently employed in Israel. Over 15,000 have permits to stay in Israel overnight. Should these numbers be increased?  Before the government makes a decision I would suggest that it watch the report broadcast on Channel 2 TV on the travail that Palestinian workers have to endure on their way to Israel. It involves getting up before sunrise and standing in line for hours in enclosures with thousands of others before they can finally get past the checkpoint and enter the “promise land." Another TV report some months ago showed how Palestinian workers who have permission to stay in Israel spend their nights — in hovels, at building sites, out in the open. This is no way to make friends and influence people. Their work in Israel may give them the meager income they so desperately need —more than twice what they could earn closer to their homes if they could get work there — but it is bound to leave a very bitter taste. No bridge to good neighborly relations is to be found here.  Allowing tens of thousands of Palestinian workers to enter Israel each day is not the only way to support the Palestinian economy in Judea and Samaria. It is probably the worst possible way, creating feelings of rancor and frustration among those whom it is presumably meant to help. The industrial zones, like Barkan in Samaria and Ma’aleh Adumim in Judea, which provide employment for Palestinian workers living in the vicinity, are a far better way of assisting the Palestinian economy in Judea and Samaria. Over 10,000 Palestinians are currently employed in such industrial zones, earning salaries and receiving social benefits as provided by Israeli law.  Their employment conditions are far superior to those of Palestinian workers crossing into Israel in the early hours of the morning and returning home at nightfall. Instead of increasing the number of Palestinians permitted to work in Israel, the government should provide incentives for more investments in these industrial zones so as to create additional employment opportunities for Palestinian workers there. These will lead to direct investments in the Palestinian economy which do not have the negative side effects that accompany the daily influx of Palestinians into Israel. This daily migration also involves security problems. Two Israelis were recently knifed to death in Tel Aviv by a Palestinian worker who had entered Israel that day with a work permit.

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 The EU, now facing attacks from Islamic jihadists, has, as usual, got it all wrong, when its bureaucrats call on members to label products originating in the industrial zones of Judea and Samaria, in anticipation that such products will be boycotted by European shoppers. If their plans prove to be effective they will hurt the Palestinians living in these territories, increase unemployment there, force Palestinians into lower-paying jobs and add to the masses making the trip to Israel each morning in search of work. In other words, such a move will lead to a net loss for the Palestinian economy.  The industrial zones in Judea and Samaria contribute far more to the Palestinian economy than do the subsidies provided by the EU to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Who knows how much of these subsidies go to waste there in a network of corruption? The EU would do better to encourage European shoppers to purchase products originating in the industrial zones. Moshe Arens became the Israeli ambassador to the United States for one year, before returning to Israel to become Defense Minister. Arens served as Foreign Minister from 1988 to 1990 and became defense minister again between 1990 and 1992, when he retired from politics, only to return in 1999 to the same portfolio.

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