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Israel and the Middle East News Update Israel and the Middle East News Update Friday, March 6 Headlines: ● Liberman Will Support Bill to Disqualify Netanyahu ● Blue & White Leader Backs Minority Gov't with Arab Support ● 14 Americans Stuck in Palestinian Hotel Due to Coronavirus ● PA Shutters West Bank, Israel Quarantines Bethlehem ● Coronavirus at Pandemic Level, Israeli Health Official Warns ● US to Okay Annexation if Palestinians Don’t Negotiate ● Israel Attends Anti-terrorism Conference in Morocco ● Israelis and Palestinians Discuss Efforts to Counter Corona Commentary: ● Ma’ariv: “Number Theory” − By Ben Caspit ● Times of Israel: “Ousting Bibi Could Become Gantz's Biggest Mistake” − By Haviv Rettig Gur S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace 633 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 20004 The Hon. Robert Wexler, President News Excerpts March 6, 2020 Times of Israel Liberman Will Support Bill to Disqualify Netanyahu Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party is expected to recommend to President Reuven Rivlin that Blue and White leader Benny Gantz be tasked with forming a government. With Liberman’s backing, Gantz could receive more recommendations than Netanyahu. Liberman’s reported move to back Gantz is also aimed at giving Blue and White control over the Knesset speaker position, allowing the opposition parties to advance legislation that would prevent a person facing criminal charges from forming a government — effectively disqualifying Netanyahu from doing so. After holding a faction meeting earlier Thursday, Yisrael Beytenu said in a statement that it had decided “to move forward with the promotion of two laws: The first law will limit the tenure of a prime minister to two terms. The second law will prevent an MK facing indictment from forming a government.” I24 News Blue & White Leader Backs Minority Gov't with Arab Support Moshe "Boggie" Ya'alon, former Defense Minister under Benjamin Netanyahu and head of Telem party within the Blue and White alliance, is backing the prospect of a minority government with outside support from the Arab Joint List, Haaretz reported Friday. Previously, he reportedly opposed this idea, but now said during at least two recent meetings that he would be willing to back it on the condition that Joint List's hardline Balad faction is left out. As one of the more hawkish factions within the centrist alliance, Telem reportedly saw two of its members blamed for sinking the minority government as an option after the September vote. While the official results are yet to be announced, the tally released by the Central Election commission unofficially puts the Joint List at 15 mandates, its best performance on record. Three of those are to be held by Balad members. Jerusalem Post 14 Americans Stuck in Palestinian Hotel Due to Coronavirus At least 40 people have been quarantined against their will in a Palestinian hotel near Bethlehem, in the West Bank, due to an outbreak of coronavirus. They include 14 American citizens, as well as about 25 Palestinian guests and employees. The Angel Hotel, in mostly Christian Beit Jala, just west of the city where Jesus is said to have been born, is where seven people were discovered to have the virus, making them the first known cases in the Palestinian Authority, a matter made public on Thursday morning. The Israeli Defense Ministry ordered an end to crossings from the area until further notice. There are currently 17 known cases of coronavirus in Israel, where harsh measures have been imposed in an effort to stop the spread. 2 Times of Israel PA Shutters West Bank, Israel Quarantines Bethlehem The Palestinian Authority declared an unprecedented state of emergency in the West Bank Thursday after seven Bethlehem residents were confirmed to be carrying the coronavirus, shutting schools, banning tourists and placing restrictions on gatherings and movement between cities. Israel, which controls the West Bank, placed Bethlehem on lockdown, banning Israelis and Palestinians from entering or leaving the storied city, as officials from both governments race to contain the virus’s spread in Palestinian population centers. PA President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday issued a presidential decree declaring a state of emergency in all Palestinian-controlled territory for 30 days beginning at 8 a.m. Friday, authorizing officials to take “all necessary measures to confront the risks resulting from the coronavirus and to protect public health.” Times of Israel Coronavirus at Pandemic Level, Israeli Health Official Warns Health Ministry’s Asher Shalmon says situation around the world points to an emerging ‘full- blown international event,’ says vaccine a year away despite claims. The novel coronavirus spreading across the world is already at a “pandemic” stage, a top Israeli health official said Thursday, though world health authorities have held off from declaring a global outbreak. “Although officially the World Health Organization did not yet declare a pandemic, we do feel we are at a pandemic stage,” Asher Shalmon, the Health Ministry’s director of international relations, said Thursday. The coronavirus has infected nearly 98,000 people worldwide and killed over 3,300, the vast majority of them in China. Cases have been reported in 80 countries and in recent days, more people outside of China have been falling ill than inside the country, where the virus is on the decline. Times of Israel US to Okay Annexation if Palestinians Don’t Negotiate Senior White House officials were quoted Thursday by an Israeli television network as saying that they intended to green-light Israeli annexation of swaths of West Bank land within months if the Palestinians don’t return to the negotiating table. According to Channel 13, the sources said they intend to go ahead with the implementation of the peace plan unveiled earlier this year by US President Donald Trump’s administration. They reportedly stressed that this would happen even if fourth successive Knesset elections are called following another deadlocked vote this week. They added that both contenders for the premiership, the incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu and challenger Benny Gantz, know that Trump’s presidency marks a unique opportunity. 3 Times of Israel Israel Attends Anti-terrorism Conference in Morocco Two major polls released Sunday evening show that embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken a small lead over chief rival Benny Gantz just a week before Israel's general election. According to surveys published by Israel's Channel 12 and public broadcaster Kan, Netanyahu Likud party is up one seat over the centrist Blue & White alliance. The Channel 12 poll gives Likud a 34 to 33 advantage in the race, while the Kan survey shows 35 seats for Likud and 34 for Blue & White. But experts believe that the fall out from the announcement of an investigation into Gantz's former security company, Fifth Dimension, has hurt the opposition leader. Gantz is currently not a suspect in the probe. Ha’aretz Israelis and Palestinians Discuss Efforts to Counter Corona In a rare move, Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials met Thursday to coordinate joint efforts to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19. Director of the National Security Council for Counter-Terrorism, Public Security and the Home Front, Yigal Slovik, as well as officials from Israel's Health Ministry and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories at the Defense Ministry (COGAT) represented Israel in the meeting. Both sides shared information that has been gathered so far about the spread of the global pandemic and coordinated stances about future steps to deal with the disease. In addition, the PA and Israeli officials decided to cooperate on epidemiologic investigations, particularly those involving tourists who visited both Israel and the PA-controlled West Bank. 4 Ma’ariv– March 6, 2020 Number Theory By Ben Caspit, ● Strange as it sounds, both boxers got pummeled mercilessly this week. The one who took a worse beating was Binyamin Netanyahu, who had already celebrated his “huge victory” with drums, dances and parties, only to find out two days later that he had become the new Shimon Peres. When we went to sleep, we had Bibi; when we woke up, we had Tibi. He doesn’t have a government, and he probably won’t have one either. The end of his political career seems closer than ever. The other one is Benny Gantz. A pale campaign and an outcome that wasn’t good enough made him “Mr. Almost.” The terrible defamatory campaign that Netanyahu waged against him left him deeply scarred. An unprecedentedly dirty wave of rumors, fabrications, smears and curses that the prime minister’s campaign surrogates spread tarnished Gantz’s good name and made him, at least for now, one of the people who despises Netanyahu the most. All that’s left is to wish that Bibi had used these methods in the war against Hamas. The lives of the residents of the Gaza periphery communities could have looked completely different. ● Now that the dust of battle has settled, it turns out that Gantz’s options are much better than Netanyahu’s possibilities. The “anyone but Netanyahu” camp is bigger than the “only Netanyahu” camp. Bibi doesn’t have a government, Gantz can go in a few interesting directions. But for the moment he’s in shock and licking his wounds, and not just him: the entire cockpit is trying to catch its breath again and reorganize its thoughts after getting off the crazy roller coaster that a campaigner as wicked, ruthless and uninhibited as Binyamin Netanyahu put them through. The disagreement revolves around a double issue: should they go for legislation to prevent a criminal defendant from serving as prime minister and block Netanyahu and end his political career that way? Should they form a minority government consisting of Blue and White and Labor- Gesher-Meretz, which will rely on the outside support of 12 MKs from the Joint List (without Balad) and Liberman? ● The second issue has begun to develop in an interesting way: former defense minister and chief of staff Moshe (Bogie) Yaalon has not rejected it out of hand.
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