Israel and the Middle East News Update

Thursday, July 26

Headlines: ● Hamas Vows Revenge, as IDF Kills 3 After Soldier Shot ● Amid Druze Outcry, PM Calls Meeting on Nation-State Law ● Trump Team Preparing Economic Component of Peace Plan ● Israel Hits Syria After Rockets Fall into Sea of Galilee ● UNRWA Will Trim 267 Jobs, Citing US Funding Cut ● UN: World Bank to Allocate $90 Million for Palestinians ● Israel to Release Palestinian Teen Ahed Tamimi ● Former Pentagon Official to Head UN Gaza Probe

Commentary: ● Jerusalem Post: “Jewish and Democratic” − By the Jerusalem Post Editorial Board ● Foreign Policy: “Moscow Holds the Key to Israeli-Syrian Peace” − By Dov Zakheim, former US Undersecretary of Defense

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 July 26, 2018

Times of Israel Hamas Vows Revenge, as IDF Kills 3 After Soldier Shot Hamas’s military wing announced Thursday morning that its forces were going on high alert, following Wednesday night’s sniper fire from Gaza that moderately wounded an IDF officer near Kissufim, which was followed by retaliatory strikes by IDF tanks and planes that left three members of the terror group dead. Following the exchange of fire, nine rockets were launched early Thursday from Gaza toward Israeli towns, eight landing in uninhabited areas and one shot down by the Iron Dome system. There were no reports of injuries or damage.

Times of Israel Amid Druze Outcry, PM Calls Meeting on Nation-State Law In a surprise move, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that he plans to convene a meeting next week on the Jewish nation-state law amid a fierce outcry against the legislation by the Druze minority. Netanyahu will not consider amending the law, however, Hebrew media sources reported. The reports came after Education Minister Naftali Bennett vowed to work to “heal the wound” the law has inflicted on the Druze community. On Sunday, Israeli Druze leaders, including three Knesset members, petitioned the High Court of Justice against the Jewish nation-state legislation, saying it was an “extreme” act that discriminated against the country’s minorities.

Reuters Trump Team Preparing Economic Component of Peace Plan A long-awaited Middle East peace plan from the Trump administration will include what the White House is calling a robust economic plan to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an official has said. President Trump's envoys are also working on the most detailed set of proposals to date for the overall plan, the White House official said in a briefing with reporters on Monday. The White House has offered few details on a peace plan that has drawn widespread skepticism even before its unveiling.

Associated Press Israel Hits Syria After Rockets Fall into Sea of Galilee The IDF says it bombarded a rocket launcher in Syria in response to two missiles that fell into the Sea of Galilee. The army said on Wednesday that the area surrounding the rocket launcher was targeted by Israeli artillery. The rockets appeared to be errant fire from clashes between Syrian government forces and rebel groups near the frontier with Israel. Earlier this week the Israeli military shot down a Syrian fighter jet that it said had breached Israeli airspace. Israel also activated its aerial defense system on Monday in response to missiles fired from Syria.

The New York Times UNRWA Will Trim 267 Jobs, Citing US Funding Cut The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees will cut more than 260 jobs and curtail mental health services and mobile health clinics, it announced on Wednesday, the first reduction since the US suspended tens of millions of dollars in funding this year. The cuts are the first outcome of a significant American reduction in contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA. The Trump administration has provided about $60 million this year, a drop of more than 80 percent from the $360 million the United States contributed in 2017. Historically, the United States has been one of the biggest donors to UNRWA, which provides food, education, health services and employment to many Palestinians classified as refugees in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Ha’aretz UN: World Bank to Allocate $90 Million for Palestinians UN special envoy to the Middle East Nickolay Mladenov on Wednesday said the World Bank will allocate $90 million to Palestinians, up from $55 million last year, in response to "the alarming economic circumstances in the occupied Palestinian territory." Mladenov said much of the money will be used for job creation in Gaza, adding that the UN is working to "reduce tensions, address humanitarian needs and support the Palestinian Authority's return" to Gaza. Mladenov on Tuesday urged Trump to resume funding for UNRWA.

Ha’aretz Israel to Release Palestinian Teen Ahed Tamimi Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian teenager convicted of assaulting Israeli soldiers, will be released on Sunday after serving her sentence, her family said Thursday. Tamimi, 17, from Nabi Saleh in the West Bank, turned into a protest icon after she was filmed slapping an Israeli soldier. She was detained for three months before being sentenced in March to eight months in jail after reaching a plea deal. After her release, Tamimi is expected to hold a press conference in her hometown.

Ha’aretz Former Pentagon Official to Head UN Gaza Probe American jurist Prof. David Crane has been appointed to head a special commission established by the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate the violence on the Gaza Strip border in recent months. The panel will also include attorneys Sara Hossein from Bangladesh and Betty Murungi from Kenya. Crane, an expert in international law and a past deputy inspector general at the U.S. Defense Department’s Office of Intelligence Review. He is currently a professor of international law at Syracuse University. He was also a prosecutor in the international court in Sierra Leone.

Jerusalem Post – July 25, 2018 Jewish and Democratic By the Jerusalem Post Editorial Board

● The Nation-State Law surely created varied reactions since last week. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan led the pack, calling Israel “the most Zionist, fascist and racist country in the world.” “The Jewish Nation-State Law... legitimizes all unlawful actions and oppression. There is no difference between Hitler’s Aryan race obsession and Israel’s mentality. Hitler’s spirit has re-emerged among administrators in Israel,” said Erdogan, who has not been exemplary in dealing with the Kurdish minority in his country. Of course, that hyperbole goes way overboard in describing the effects of the law on Israel, but closer to home, there has also been more nuanced, but still barbed criticism. Ayman Odeh, chairman of the Joint List, said Israel “passed a law of Jewish supremacy and told us [Israel’s Arab citizens] that we will always be second-class citizens.”

● Officially called the “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People,” the legislation – which was passed by a vote of 62-55 – states that “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people, and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it.” It puts on paper some of the defining characterizations of Israel that have been part of the country’s fabric since 1948, many of which are already parts of laws that codify and express Israel’s Jewish identity. For example, the Law of Return, passed in 1950, automatically grants citizenship to any Jew immigrating to Israel. But the law goes beyond previous declarations of Israel as a Jewish state by further marginalizing its minority citizens in stating that the state’s language is Hebrew and relegating Arabic – the language of 20% of the population – to “special status in the state.” Another clause says, “The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation,” wording that can be construed as supporting Jewish-only communities.

● Kulanu MK Akram Hasson and other top Druze officials filed a petition on Sunday asking the High Court of Justice to strike down all or part of the law as unconstitutional. Hasson said the law transforms the country’s Druze population and other minorities, including Arabs, into second-class citizens. The petition called the law “a terrible blow to the Druze sector, a terrible blow to democracy and a terrible blow to Zionism. The Jewish Nation-State Law disproportionately and unreasonably harms [all minorities, turning them] into exiled people in their own homeland.” As Prof. Dov Waxman of Northeastern University wrote, Israel has never been a truly liberal democracy that treats all its citizens equally regardless of their ethnicity or religion. “Instead, from the outset it has been an ‘ethnic democracy’ or ‘ethnocracy’ as scholars have labeled it, serving Jews first and foremost. While Arab living standards have certainly risen over the years, Israel has never fully lived up to the promise contained in its Declaration of Independence to ‘foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants,’ and ‘ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex,’” wrote Waxman.

● Since its founding in 1948, Israel has grappled with the conundrum of being both a Jewish nation-state and a democracy. Is it even possible? Those tenets in the new law include many of the values that probably many people reading this right now share and weighed when deciding to pick up their lives and move to Israel – the symbols of the country like the flag, Hatikva, Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the Jewish people, and the Hebrew calendar as the guideline for the rhythm of the country. But they were already well in place. Did we really need a new law that states the obvious, but also further erodes any sense of Israel’s minorities of belonging to the country? As we wrote last week when the bill passed, we agree with Likud MK Bennie Begin, who before abstaining on the vote for law, said it should have stated clearly that Israel, as a Jewish and democratic state, is committed to safeguarding the rights of its minorities. After all, isn’t that what being a Jewish state is all about?

Foreign Policy – July 25, 2018 Moscow Holds the Key to Israeli-Syrian Peace By Dov Zakheim, former US Undersecretary of Defense

● Israel shot down a Syrian fighter jet this week—the first time it has done so since 2014. This does not necessarily mean the two countries are about to go to war. The Israelis are not interested in a conflict along the Syrian border—their hands are quite full with the tensions along the Gaza Strip. For his part, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has yet to finish off the rebels whom he has fought for seven years. He knows full well that his forces are no match for those of Israel, which U.S. News & World Report ranked the world’s eighth most powerful country, just behind France and Japan.

● The Syrian plane that Israel shot down—a Sukhoi Su-22 or Su-24, according to the Israeli military—was an export variant of the 1970s-era Su-17. It was no match for Israel’s state-of-the art David’s Sling missile defense system, which it fired in combat for the first time. The Israelis may well have been sending a message to Assad that he would do best to return to the 1974 disengagement agreement that then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had negotiated between Israel and Assad’s father, the wily Hafez al-Assad. The senior Assad never broke that agreement, and for years, neither did his son. Despite harsh rhetoric constantly emanating from Damascus, the border remained quiet.

● Israel is less concerned about Assad than it is about the Iranians, who, with the Russians and Hezbollah, have been responsible for the Syrian leader’s clear victory over the rebels. It has looked to Moscow to push the Iranians out of Syria. In the meantime, Israel has coordinated its operations with the Russians. Before shooting down the plane that took off from Syria’s Tiyas Military Air Base headed for Israeli airspace, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government first checked with Moscow that it was Syrian, not Russian. Netanyahu, who has become a frequent visitor to Moscow, pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin to expel the Iranians from Syria. In response, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s longtime foreign minister, offered to keep the Iranians from approaching to within 60 miles of the Syria-Israel border, but Netanyahu rejected the offer as inadequate. No doubt Jerusalem and Moscow will reach some sort of understanding; whether Iran cooperates is an entirely different matter.

● It is noteworthy that the United States has not figured in Israel’s efforts to push the Iranians out of Syria. Jerusalem, like the rest of the region, recognizes that at least for the time being Moscow is the arbiter of the Middle East. On the other hand, Israel’s employment of David’s Sling underscored the importance of its ongoing relationship with the United States. The system was developed with U.S. funds and might not have come into existence without that support. As long as Israel remains dependent for its defense needs on U.S. funding—and it is only in the first year of a decade-long, $38 billion assistance agreement established in the final months of the Obama administration—Washington will still have considerable influence over Israel’s policies. But the Trump administration’s clear determination to exit from Syria, and perhaps from

Iraq and elsewhere in the region, has forced the Israelis, like their Arab neighbors, to give far greater weight to Russian concerns than ever before.

● The lesson of the shootdown is therefore not that a Syrian-Israeli war is imminent but that Russia, not the United States, holds the key to peace along the Golan Heights border. Only Russia can press Assad to abide by the 1974 agreement. Only Russia has any chance of maneuvering Tehran into agreeing to withdraw its forces sufficiently far from the Golan Heights to assuage Jerusalem. The United States remains Israel’s primary arms supplier and its military bank. But it no longer can resurrect the degree of influence that enabled Kissinger to negotiate a border agreement that lasts.