Israel and the Middle East News Update

Friday, January 19

Headlines:

• Jordan Embassy to Resume Full Operations After Apology • Pence heads to Jerusalem, Epicenter of Rift with Palestinians • Macron Dispatched Adviser to Sway Palestinians on Trump's Plan • Report: U.S. Ambassador Will Work in Jerusalem by 2019 • Israel Puts Tunnel Dug Under Gaza Border on Display • Israeli Lawmakers Decry Deportation of Asylum Seekers • Labor MK Questioned in “Yedioth Ahronoth Affair” • Minister to Disabled: 'Netanyahu Doesn't Care About You'

Commentary: • Forward: “Trump Has Handed the Israel Lobby To Evangelicals. That’s Terrifying” - By Jane Eisner, editor-in-chief of the Forward • Al Monitor: “Israeli Nationalists' Messiah Complex” - By Akiva Eldar, Columnist at Al Monitor

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 January 19, 2018 Ynet News Jordan Embassy to Resume Full Operations After Apology Jordan said on Thursday that Israel had formally apologized for the deaths of two of its citizens killed by an Israeli security guard last July in an incident that has soured ties and led to the closure of the Israeli embassy in Amman, state media said. Government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani was quoted by state news agency Petra as saying the Israeli Foreign Ministry had sent a memorandum in which it sent its "deep regrets and apologies" over the incident at the embassy and said Israel pledged to take legal steps in the case. Al-Momani added that Israel also apologized over the killing of Jordanian citizen Raed Zeiter at the Allenby crossing in March of 2014. See also, “Jordan says Israel apologizes for deaths of two Jordanians at embassy” (Reuters)

Times of Israel Pence heads to Jerusalem, Epicenter of Rift with Palestinians US Vice President Mike Pence is set to arrive at Ben Gurion Airport Sunday evening, marking the first visit to Israel of a senior American official since the Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital last month. In light of the Palestinians’ decision to boycott the US administration after President Donald Trump’s December 6 decision to recognize Jerusalem, Pence’s delegation, which consist of more than 150 people, will not go to Ramallah or meet with Palestinian Authority officials. See also, “ Analysis: Pence's Middle East trip meant to highlight evangelical roots” (CBS)

The Hill Macron Dispatched Adviser to Sway Pal’ on Trump's Plan French President Emmanuel Macron dispatched his deputy national security adviser, Aurélien Lechevallier, to the Palestinian city of Ramallah this week to convince Palestinian leaders to give President Trump's peace plan for the region a chance, Axios reported on Thursday. French and Palestinian officials told the news outlet that Lechevallier met with various senior Palestinian officials, including the head of the general intelligence service, Majed Faraj, and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Secretary General Saeb Erekat. "You might be right and the plan might turn out to be bad but don't blow it up right now. The plan might have things you don't like but maybe it will also contain interesting and positive things for you," Lechevallier told officials, according to Axios. See also, “Macron said to tell Abbas not to rule out Trump peace plan” (TOI)

Ha’aretz Report: U.S. Ambassador Will Work in Jerusalem by 2019 The Trump administration is working to find a temporary solution that would allow its ambassador in Israel, David Friedman, to move his office to an existing building in Jerusalem in 2019, before the construction of a new embassy building in the city. The administration's intention was first reported this week by Israel's main television news company, and was confirmed on Thursday by the New York Times. The Times report stated that until a new embassy will be built, Friedman will work out of a building in the Arnona neighborhood of Jerusalem, which currently serves as an American consular office. See also,”U.S. Presses to Relocate Embassy to Jerusalem by 2019” (New York Times) 2

Reuters Israel Puts Tunnel Dug Under Gaza Border on Display The Israeli military brought journalists on Thursday to film a 2 km (1.25 mile) tunnel dug by militants from the Gaza Strip to Israel, saying it was putting the construction on display to show the continuing threat it faces from the territory. The Islamic Jihad militant group has claimed responsibility for building the tunnel, saying its aim was to use it to attack Israel in the next armed confrontation. Twelve Gaza militants, most of them from Islamic Jihad, were killed in the destruction of the tunnel and in rescue efforts when Israel destroyed the underground passage on October 30. The tunnel, around the height and width of an upright person, was lined with concrete slabs. It was discovered about 120 meters inside Israel near Kissufim, about six meters below ground, as tunnelers burrowed towards the surface looking to build an exit, the Israeli military said. i24 News Israeli Lawmakers Decry Deportation of Asylum Seekers Lawmakers, rabbis, students, Holocaust survivors and asylum-seekers united on Wednesday at the Israeli parliament under the banner “not in our name”, in opposition to Netanyahu’s recently announced and highly controversial scheme to deport African migrants from the country. “We are here today to convey a clear message to the government: Not in our name! We must stop this government from...expelling refugees and asylum seekers to the unknown,” declared Meretz MK Michal Rozin who convened the Knesset conference, alongside Dov Khenin from the Joint List and Kulanu member Eli Alaluf. Outside the Knesset, meanwhile, ten asylum seekers stood on crate boxes bound by thick silver chains with masking taped-mouths in a dramatic mock ‘slave auction’. See also, “Inspired by Anne Frank, Rabbis in Israel Plan to Hide African Asylum Seekers Facing Deportation” (Ha’aretz)

Jerusalem Post Labor MK Questioned in “Yedioth Ahronoth Affair” MK Eitan Cabel (Labor) was questioned under caution on Thursday over his involvement in Case 2000, the “Yediot Aharonot affair.” Cabel was the initiator of the “Israel Hayom bill” that would have banned the free distribution of the daily paper. Police suspect that Cabel worked with Yediot Aharonot publisher Arnon Mozes to create legislation that would weaken the paper’s biggest competition, Israel Hayom, in return for favorable coverage in Yediot. Channel 2 reported Thursday that police interrogators had received information that Cabel had exchanged more than 60 text messages and phone calls with Mozes in the year prior to the bill, and more than 50 with the paper’s editor-in-chief. See also, “Opposition MK, newspaper publisher grilled in Netanyahu corruption probe” (TOI)

Ynet News Minister to Disabled: 'Netanyahu Doesn't Care About You' Exclusive recordings obtained by Ynet taken during a Wednesday meeting with disabled protest representatives at the Government Quarter revealed extremely harsh language used by Welfare Minister Haim Katz (Likud) to refer to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Finance Ministry. Comment from the minister had not yet been received. During the meeting, Katz commented on the disability benefit freeze in 2003, when Netanyahu was in the Treasury: "In 2003 (Netanyahu) didn't care about you. Even if you went on a struggle, he wouldn't care about you. Because in 2003 he nationalized pension funds, stopped bonds, there was an intifada, industry sucked and civilians weren't coming in here.” 3

Forward– January 15, 2018 Trump Has Handed The Israel Lobby To Evangelicals. That’s Terrifying

By Jane Eisner, editor-in-chief of the Forward

• Vice President Mike Pence’s on again, off again visit to Israel is apparently on again for next week, but the actual timing was never the real thing. Pence and other deeply conservative white Christian evangelicals now driving American policy toward Israel and the Palestinians are playing a very long game that extends far beyond one news cycle. They are turning public support for Israel — which largely had been bipartisan and religiously pluralistic — into an effort propelled by members of one political party and one religious worldview. • Their belief that Jews, and only Jews, must rule over Jerusalem to herald the return of Jesus Christ influenced President Trump’s decision last December to reverse nearly seven decades of American foreign policy and recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Their absolute fealty toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and their antipathy toward the Palestinians are reflected in the itinerary for next week’s trip: Pence is not scheduled to meet with any Palestinian leader, the first time in decades for a top American official. • Some may welcome the way that the Trump administration has tilted the scales toward Israel and its current hard-line government. But there is real reason to worry when foreign policy is in the grip of fundamentalist ideology, when political issues become biblical ones. And this shift is not confined to America. The president of Guatemala, one of the few leaders to so far follow suit and recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, also relies on the support of his country’s influential Christian evangelical community. • The American Israel Public Affairs Committee remains the largest, richest and dominant Israel lobby in Washington, and its “big tent” approach still defines support for Israel in Congress and beyond. AIPAC prides itself on being bipartisan, and its annual convention attracts scores and scores of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. While the number of yarmulke-wearing Orthodox Jews attending that convention has increased over the years, AIPAC still finds support in all Jewish religious denominations, and has actively courted other faith groups into its fold. But after Trump’s unlikely victory, AIPAC is now directly challenged by Christians United for Israel, an evangelical lobby with a more hard-line and partisan approach that aligns with those setting the agenda in the White House. • AIPAC supports a two-state solution; CUFI does not. AIPAC was slow to endorse the Taylor Force Act to strip the Palestinian Authority of some funding; CUFI is in favor of defunding the P.A. entirely. AIPAC stayed largely on the sidelines in pushing for the Jerusalem decision; CUFI was out front. CUFI has strong personal ties to the White House now that Pence is hovering over Trump’s shoulder. Pence visited Israel with CUFI in 2014 and addressed its annual conference this year. The son of its chief Washington lobbyist is a senior Pence aide. “The vice president has been a lifelong friend to Israel,” The Rev. John Hagee, CUFI’s founder and chairman, told Politico after the Jerusalem decision was announced. • In the same interview, Hagee said words that we’ve become accustomed to hearing from Orthodox Jews: “[F]or millions of evangelical voters, the president’s position on Israel was a 4

central factor in their support for him in the 2016 election. I think over the past year, and of course in the past week, we’ve seen that our trust in President Trump was well placed.” And, perhaps not coincidentally, Trump and CUFI share a major benefactor: the megadonor Sheldon Adelson, who publicly broke with AIPAC some years ago. • These political shifts, expected when new administrations assume power and new parties ascend, are made more consequential because they are rooted in a fundamentalist religious doctrine. Whereas AIPAC embraces many strains of Jewish practice (or none at all) the white evangelical Christians who have Trump’s ear are absolutely certain of their faith-derived convictions. “This runs deep. It is a core value,” Richard Land told me in an interview. “I can’t imagine that Jewish people and Israelis can have a stronger ally than the evangelical Christians who believe as I do. Even if they attack us, we are going to turn the other cheek. There’s nothing we’re going to do that will stop us from being pro-Jewish and pro-Israeli.” • Land is the president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, and formerly ran the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. “Evangelical Protestants, the majority of them, believe that God made certain promises to Israel and that those promises are still in force,” Land said. “That the Jews are still God’s chosen people. That he gave the land of Canaan to the Jews forever, in obedience and disobedience.” • Since Land and others like him believe that Jesus Christ will only return as the Messiah when Jews reside in Canaan and rule over Jerusalem, the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 is considered a fulfillment of one aspect of biblical prophecy. Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem is another one. That’s because their faith is predicated on Jews playing a major role, though one that can make many of us uncomfortable. And while Americans of many faiths subscribe to the idea that Jews, Muslims and Christians pray essentially to the same God, evangelical Christians like Land do not. “The God of Islam is not the father of our lord savior,” he told me. “It’s a different God entirely. I see no resemblance between the God of Islam and the God of Christianity and Judaism. I don’t recognize the God of the Quran.” • So while Jews have a starring role to play in this biblical drama, Muslims decidedly do not. And this isn’t just about what’s going to happen in the Middle East today. Land believes that the only way God will bless America is if America blesses the Jews. And America blesses the Jews by pursuing a foreign policy that ensures Jewish autonomy over all of ancient Israel, including Jerusalem. Including the Temple Mount. “The Jews being back in the land and being in control of the land is part of the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, “ Land insisted. “If we were, as a country, to thwart the Jewish people and their desires and their God-given right to occupy that land, then God would not bless us as a people.” • This explains how and why a segment of Americans of very deep faith can support not only Trump’s decision on Jerusalem, but also the many other ways Trump has singled out, demeaned and harmed Muslims. They are simply not blessed. We Jews are. Policy that is shaped by religious belief has a place in the American public square. But when fervent religious belief is entwined with political power, when the resultant policy is perceived to be divinely ordained, it can become dangerous. It becomes impervious to compromise. It can flare into a holy war. • Politics can make some very strange bedfellows. But before American Jews — Israelis, too — embrace this new alliance for what it may deliver temporarily, we should consider the long-term consequences. Evangelical support for Israel may be heartfelt, but in the end it is transactional. And ultimately Jews may pay the price. 5

SUMMARY: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee remains the largest, richest and dominant Israel lobby in Washington, and its “big tent” approach still defines support for Israel in Congress and beyond. AIPAC prides itself on being bipartisan, and its annual convention attracts scores and scores of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. While the number of yarmulke-wearing Orthodox Jews attending that convention has increased over the years, AIPAC still finds support in all Jewish religious denominations, and has actively courted other faith groups into its fold. But after Trump’s unlikely victory, AIPAC is now directly challenged by Christians United for Israel, an evangelical lobby with a more hard- line and partisan approach that aligns with those setting the agenda in the White House. AIPAC supports a two-state solution; CUFI does not. AIPAC was slow to endorse the Taylor Force Act to strip the Palestinian Authority of some funding; CUFI is in favor of defunding the P.A. entirely. AIPAC stayed largely on the sidelines in pushing for the Jerusalem decision; CUFI was out front. CUFI has strong personal ties to the White House now that Pence is hovering over Trump’s shoulder. Pence visited Israel with CUFI in 2014 and addressed its annual conference this year. The son of its chief Washington lobbyist is a senior Pence aide. “The vice president has been a lifelong friend to Israel,” The Rev. John Hagee, CUFI’s founder and chairman, told Politico after the Jerusalem decision was announced.

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Al Monitor– January 18, 2017 Israeli Nationalists' Messiah Complex

By Akiva Eldar, Columnist at Al Monitor

• A senior member of the Israeli government complained last week that despite repeated bombings of targets in the Gaza Strip, from which several rockets were fired at Israel, there had been no reports of wounded or dead Palestinians. “What is this special weapon we have that we fire and see pillars of smoke and fire, but nobody gets hurt? It is time for there to be injuries and deaths as well,” Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel demanded in a radio interview on Jan. 10. On the same day, while eulogizing Rabbi Raziel Shevach, who was murdered in a drive-by shooting near the unsanctioned West Bank outpost of Havat Gilad, Ariel appealed to a higher power to get the job done. “We want divine retribution,” he cried. • The minister, whose far-right Tkuma (Hebrew for "resurrection") party joined HaBayit HaYehudi in the ruling coalition, vowed not to back down. “We swear to build the Land of Israel, and there is no one to stop the redemption of the people of Israel. … You cannot stop this melody. It is a divine melody and we are its messengers,” added Ariel, himself from the West Bank settlement of Beit El. • When an elected official in a state that presumes to be the only democracy in the region views himself as the messenger of a higher power, he obviously has no use for the Knesset and its laws nor for the government and its decisions. An Israeli soldier who stops Jewish settlers from uprooting the olive trees of Palestinians is preventing the redemption of holy land, and when an Israeli police officer detains a West Bank settler for spitting in the face of a Palestinian woman, he is clearly disrupting the “divine melody.” • If a minister in the Palestinian Authority had complained about the negligible number of Israelis killed and wounded in terror attacks, an almighty storm would have ensued. Imagine the headlines reporting the Palestinian ministerial declaration, “We are the messengers of God. No one can stop the redemption of Palestine in its entirety.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have demanded that President Mahmoud Abbas immediately fire the “wayward” minister and condemn his remarks. Pundits would have pointed with concern to Abbas’ inability to stem the spread of Islamist ideology to the Palestinian leadership’s top echelons. • Fundamentalist, messianic ideologies are nothing new in Israeli society. Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur from the “Od Yosef Chai” yeshiva in the settlement of Yitzhar justified the execution of the enemy’s babies in their 2009 book “Torat Hamelech,” the “King’s Torah.” The babies and children of Israel's enemies may be killed since "it is clear that they will grow to harm us" and will have to be killed anyway, the two opined. The police interrogated the two rabbis on suspicion of incitement, but they were not indicted. • Back in the 1970s, the head of the prestigious Merkaz Harav yeshiva and leader of religious Zionism, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, ruled that the government’s order to vacate Sebastia, one of the first attempts to settle in the West Bank, was illegal. Hanan Porat, one of the leaders of the Gush Emunim settlement movement, pledged that the entire world, Arabs included, would “enjoy the realization of [our] redemption.” 7

• Porat, who passed away in 2011, was one of the members of the National Religious Party (NRP) who walked out to protest his party’s support for the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt. Yehuda Ben- Meir, then a member of the party’s young leadership, told Al-Monitor this week that HaBayit HaYehudi, the party established on the ruins of the NRP, would likely have unanimously rejected that peace agreement had it been asked to vote on it today. He noted that the decision by the Mizrachi movement, one of the precursors of the NRP, to support the 1947 UN Partition Plan that divided Palestine between Jews and Arabs, had also been preceded by a stormy party leadership fight. • Ben-Meir, who served as deputy foreign minister in the 1980s government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, remarked that sadly, the reincarnation of the NRP, HaBayit HaYehudi, serves only the settlers and the right-wing Israelis who support them. “There’s no room for pluralism on issues of diplomacy, particularly regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he said. The old NRP, which had its roots in the Mizrachi party established in 1903, included such moderate figures as Joseph Burg, Haim Moshe Shapira and Zerah Verhaftig, but it cannot be resurrected, he said. “Many of the sons and grandsons of NRP voters draw a line between religion and sectoral ideology,” Ben-Meir said. “Many Israelis adhere to a religious way of life but do not identify with the [settlement] sector. They observe the Jewish Sabbath and lay tefillin, but vote for [centrist, anti-clerical] Yair Lapid, [center-right] Moshe Kahlon and even the Zionist Camp and Likud parties. They integrate into society, industry, science and political life. They do not relate to a sectoral party like HaBayit HaYehudi.” • Attorney Batia Kahane-Dror, who ran in the last HaBayit HaYehudi primaries, left the party in anger in 2015 when she realized that her championing of pragmatic attitudes had left her persona non grata. Kahane-Dror, who heads Mavoi Satum, a support organization for women who are denied divorce under Jewish law, said after her departure that HaBayit HaYehudi leaders were competing for the title of “most messianic” and striving to turn Israel into a Jewish- law state. “I espouse national, right-wing views,” she noted, “but I asked myself how I can stay in a place where ‘peace’ is a dirty word.” Party leader Naftali Bennett “gives the impression of a nice right-winger, a champion of a strong defense policy, but his views are radical and especially messianic.” • Her diagnosis of Bennett might be somewhat flawed. Ahead of the 2013 elections, Bennett forged an alliance with Lapid, who had entered politics riding a wave of secular and pragmatic political messages. This alliance was clearly indicative of Bennett’s willingness to don an everyman persona in his bid to become prime minister. Today, the high-tech millionaire from central Israel appeals to religious youth with light messianic slogans. Tomorrow he might realize that anyone who rides on the back of a tiger could end up becoming the animal’s lunch. • On the day following the November 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Rabbi Yehuda Amital, the head of the Har Etzion Yeshiva in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, warned that Jewish law, known in Hebrew as “halacha,” “can turn into dangerous explosives when in the hands of young people. … The term ‘halacha’ is too broad and sacred to be placed in the hands of every Jewish boy and girl.” One might add that this also applies to every politician lacking a backbone and maturity.

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SUMMARY: A senior member of the Israeli government complained last week that despite repeated bombings of targets in the Gaza Strip, from which several rockets were fired at Israel, there had been no reports of wounded or dead Palestinians. “What is this special weapon we have that we fire and see pillars of smoke and fire, but nobody gets hurt? It is time for there to be injuries and deaths as well,” Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel demanded in a radio interview on Jan. 10. On the same day, while eulogizing Rabbi Raziel Shevach, who was murdered in a drive-by shooting near the unsanctioned West Bank outpost of Havat Gilad, Ariel appealed to a higher power to get the job done. “We want divine retribution,” he cried. When an elected official in a state that presumes to be the only democracy in the region views himself as the messenger of a higher power, he obviously has no use for the Knesset and its laws nor for the government and its decisions. An Israeli soldier who stops Jewish settlers from uprooting the olive trees of Palestinians is preventing the redemption of holy land, and when an Israeli police officer detains a West Bank settler for spitting in the face of a Palestinian woman, he is clearly disrupting the “divine melody.”

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