Israel and the Middle East News Update

Friday, December 13

Headlines: • Hayom Poll: Center-Left Bloc – 61, Right Wing Bloc - 51, Liberman - 8 • Liberman Backs Pardon for Netanyahu in Exchange for Exit from Politics • Poll: Israelis Prefer a Two State Solution to One State • UK Chief Rabbi: Election Is Over But Worries Over anti-Semitism Remain

Commentary: • Ma’ariv: “Netanyahu’s Life’s Work” − By Ben Caspit • TOI: “Why Israel’s 3rd Election Might Not Be Such a Disaster, After All” − By David Horovitz, editor of

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 ● Yehuda Greenfield-Gilat, Associate Editor

News Excerpts December 13, 2019 Israel Hayom Poll: Center-Left Bloc – 61, Right Wing Bloc - 51, Liberman - 8 Q: If the election were held today and Binyamin Netanyahu were chairman, for which party would you vote? Blue and White: 37 Likud: 31 : 14 : 8 : 8 : 7 Labor Party-Gesher: 6 : 5 Democratic Union: 4 Q: Who do you think is primarily responsible for the failure to form a government? Binyamin Netanyahu: 43% Avigdor Liberman: 30% : 6% : 5% The Haredim: 2% Q: Will the fact that Israel is holding elections for the third time in the span of a year make you change or not change your vote compared with the previous elections? Yes: 13% No: 60% Perhaps: 27% Q: What are the odds that you will vote in the upcoming Knesset election, which will take place in approximately three months? Certain: 59% Good odds: 23% Moderate odds: 3% Poor odds: 15% See also, “Poll shows Gantz’s Blue and White opening 6-seat lead over Netanyahu’s Likud” (Times of Israel)

Times of Israel Liberman Backs Pardon for Netanyahu in Exchange for Exit Yisrael Beytenu party Avigdor Liberman said Thursday he would back a deal in which Prime Minister is allowed to avoid jail in exchange for an agreement to retire from politics. Liberman told the Ynet news site that he backed “a deal [for the premier] to retire with dignity,” claiming there was “a sense of fatigue” with Netanyahu in the Knesset and a feeling that “he’s become a burden.” He added: “No one wants to see him in prison, but no one wants him in politics either. And everyone is truly prepared to give him the opportunity to exit with dignity.” See also, “Gantz: We will consider pardon for Netanyahu if he quits politics” (Ynet News)

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Jerusalem Post Poll: Israelis Prefer a Two State Solution to One State The majority of Israelis do not expect the next government to do more to reach a peace treaty with the Palestinians, a poll commissioned by the Geneva Initiative found. More than half (56%) of Israelis expect the next government will do less or the same to work towards a peace agreement, while 44% expect it to do more. Most of those surveyed (56%) thought that allowing the current situation to continue is bad for Israel, while 23% thought it was good and 21% didn’t know. Of the following options, 57% preferred a two-state solution, 26% chose one state with fewer rights for Palestinians and 17% preferred one state with equal rights for all. Another poll question gave different options for the next decade: 53% preferred that Israel and the Palestinians reach a permanent agreement, 21% that Israel annex the West Bank, 12% that the situation stay the same, 9% don’t know and 5% that Israel will unilaterally withdraw from most of the West Bank. The Geneva Initiative, the organization that ordered the poll, promotes a two-state agreement between Israel and the Palestinians based on a 2003 draft of such an agreement reached by former senior officials on both sides. See also, “Both Israelis and Palestinians are in competition over the victim role. A new study may have the key to breaking the impasse” (Ha’aretz)

Times of Israel UK rabbi: Election is over but worries over anti-Semitism remain British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who last month took an unprecedented stand against the Labour party, says that although the election is over, there are still many challenges that must be faced, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. “It is vital that we now bring the country together, ensuring that the voices of people from across our society are heard and respected. We must focus on our shared values and leave all hatred and prejudice far behind us.” In a column published last month, Mirvis said he was compelled to intervene in politics because Britain’s were “gripped by anxiety” over the future of the community and of Judaism in the country amid the prospect of a Labour win. See also, “Corbyn's loss is Jews and Israel's gain” (Jerusalem Post)

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Ma’ariv – December 13, 2019 Life’s Work By Ben Caspit – • The Israeli political situation is crazier than any fiction, more ridiculous than any satire, more dangerous than flying down the Ayalon Highway on an electric scooter. The election for the 23rd Knesset will be held on March 2, 2020. It’s hard to believe, but it’s a fact. • Imagine for a moment if Netanyahu hadn’t moved up elections just to preempt the hearing, and then moved up elections once again to preempt the indictment, and hasn’t kept moving us and him up to death. Originally, the election for the 23rd Knesset was supposed to be held in 2028. That election is going to be held eight years earlier because of one man who has grasped the country with the last bit of his strength in an effort to evade justice. The ones who are supposed to tell him that it’s over are watching this spectacle with terrified curiosity and are silent. These elected officials have been derelict in their duty and their conscience, and we will need to get even with them in due time. • Meanwhile, the country has lost 2019, is losing 2020, the healthcare system is collapsing, the budgets are stuck, local governments are stuck, significant decisions cannot be made, the IDF doesn’t have a multiannual plan, growth has been curtailed—and this is a very partial list. But what matters is that Netanyahu goes first in an alternating premiership and serves eight months, or six, or four, or go one week one and one week off as prime minister, the post in which he has already served close to 11 years consecutively and 14 cumulatively. Like a cork that has dried out in a bottle of champagne, Netanyahu is blocking the country to which he swore his loyalty. • After all, no one else in the political establishment is holding everything up. If Netanyahu were to deign to do what any sane, responsible patriot would do in his situation (see: Ehud Olmert) and switch with Edelstein/Saar in order to deal with his legal affairs, everything would have been resolved within a matter of thirty seconds; the right wing would have remained in power, and the sun would have continued to rise. • One day of the reality of Israel is comparable to what happens in an entire season of House of Cards. The lead actors are the two Binyamins, Netanyahu and Gantz. Had it been solely up to them, things might have looked differently. The problem is that the arena is filled with supporting actors, some of whom are more dominant than the leads. Plots, intrigue, brokers, conflicting interests, dirty tricks, disorienting spins, and misrepresentations have flown all over at a crazy pace. Gantz has to worry about the Cockpit. At home, Netanyahu has to worry about the cuckoo’s nest. Just try to run a country—or to establish a government—under those conditions. • Bottom line, this week Netanyahu reaped what he has spent his whole life sowing. “If Bibi had had more credibility,” a Blue and White official told me, “Benny might have believed him and gone with him.” The problem is that Netanyahu has no credibility. It has been at absolute zero for a long time. The mass graves where all those who trusted him, went with him, signed with him, believed him, aided him and joined him were buried are filled to the brim.

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• These are multinational graves: Along with Avi Gabbay, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Mordechai, Yitzhak (Buji) Herzog, , Yair Lapid, Bogie Yaalon, Moshe Kahlon, Gilad Erdan, Dan Meridor and many, many others, you can also find non-Jews like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Abu Mazen, Abu Ala, Angela Merkel, Ronald Lauder, Tony Blair, King Hussein, King Abdullah, and so on. • Netanyahu has a method: He engages in exhausting, detailed, complex and intensive negotiations through close envoys. He never stands openly behind the concessions, the particulars and the entirety of what happens in the negotiations. At the moment of truth, when the time comes to sign on the dotted line, Netanyahu disappears. It’s exactly the same way he disappears when he has to pay for something. • He denies what happened, he says it was an “academic exercise,” an “American proposal,” a “post-Zionist scheme,” or people were speaking in their name only and overstepped their mandate. This way he has managed to concede a united Jerusalem, return to the 1967 lines, and even recognize the refugee problem countless times, without paying any price with his legendary base of voters. Why? Because it wasn’t him, it was them [i.e. his intermediaries]. They’re the ones who made concessions, they’re the ones who voted for the disengagement, they’re the ones who made deals with the Arab MKs, they’re the ones who’ve been paying protection money to Hamas. It’s never him. That is the method to mock the rest of the world. • Well, this week it was time to pay the bill. Netanyahu paid it in cash. Over the past few days he threw everything he had into the boiling kettle that he is about to get sucked into. He agreed to trade his kingdom for a horse, a donkey, a goat, whatever came first. No one on the other side believed him. Soon we will also explain why. • This week was reminiscent of the twilight of his term in 1999, when he tried to make a mockery of the entire world, to square the circle, to hold all the sticks from both ends and juggle all of them, until it all came crashing down: he went to the Wye River Plantation, signed an agreement with Arafat, agreed to return 13% of the West Bank, came back to Israel, had regrets, lunged at Barak and Lipkin-Shahak but failed to prevent the downward spiral. At the very last minute, he stood at the Knesset rostrum and called on Ehud Barak to form a “unity government” with him. Barak looked at him and smiled. “Bibi,” he told him in a measured tone from the Knesset rostrum, “it’s too late.”

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Times of Israel – December 12, 2019 Why Israel’s 3rd Election Might Not Be Such a Disaster, After All Between them, our electorate, our system and our politicians have combined to force us to a third vote inside a year. Maybe this time, we’ll manage a decisive collective decision

By David Horovitz • A third election in less than a year. It’s axiomatic that this is an absolute catastrophe, that our politicians have failed us, that the electorate’s faith in our democracy is being stretched, that our country is becoming a laughingstock. • And there’s some truth to all of that. It’s unhealthy, and potentially dangerous, for Israel to labor without a fully empowered government for what will now be well over a year at minimum — from late December 2018, when the Knesset initially dissolved ahead of the April 2019 elections, all the way through to spring 2020, when the incoming crop of MKs elected on March 2 will again try to coalesce into government and opposition. • The transition governments, all of them led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are circumscribed when it comes to making major strategic decisions: As far as we know, they don’t have the authority to make fateful, long-term diplomatic moves; they can’t annex territory; they’re not permitted to accept or reject American peace plans; they can’t even appoint a new police chief. (I say “as far as we know,” because these are largely uncharted legal territories, untested in the courts, and emphatically open to debate and disagreement.) • Lacking the necessary Knesset support, our hamstrung governments have also been unable to pass the 2020 budget — meaning that starting next month, government ministries will simply be allocated a twelfth of their annual 2019 budget, with no adjustment for any new developments. Most Knesset committees haven’t been functioning. (The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, which oversees the security establishment, is among the exceptions.) The sole acts of legislation passed by the members of parliament we elected in April and September were the laws dissolving the Knesset — their two acts of self-dismissal from office. • The sheer cost of these repeat votes is embarrassing — tens of millions each time just on election propaganda; two days off work nationwide in April and September and possibly another in March, unless they decide we’ve had enough national election holidays; and a staggering total of almost $3 billion (according to a Ynet report) for all the combined direct and indirect costs of the three elections). And oh how we could do without the weeks and weeks’ more political infighting on the campaign trail — the bitching, and the spinning, and the demonizing of left and right, ultra-Orthodox and secular, Arab and Jew. • Perhaps most troubling of all, given that our political “elites” have spent the past year focused obsessively on strengthening or seeking their hold on power, is that the question of how to utilize that power for the well-being of Israel has been marginalized. Or to put it more succinctly, they’ve all been maneuvering to lead the country rather than devoting every last second to actually running it, safeguarding it, ensuring that it thrives, planning for its future. • Plainly, at least some of our politicians have failed us. Some of them were deeply disingenuous — step forward, first and foremost, Avigdor Liberman. If he was going to refuse

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to join a coalition with the ultra-Orthodox, he should have said so before the April elections, not after. And let nobody be fooled by his claim that the bill regulating ultra-Orthodox conscription is so perfect that it must be passed in its current draft form — the Liberman demand that scuppered Netanyahu’s coalition-building efforts in April and May. As it stands, that bill would not significantly change the dismal reality in which only a small minority of eligible ultra-Orthodox males perform military or other national service. • Step forward the ultra-Orthodox politicians, too. Rather than resisting laws on IDF service, they should be initiating legislation to enable those in their constituency who want to serve in the IDF to do so, and introduce alternative national service programs for the rest. This would enable the young males of their community to subsequently enter the workforce and provide for their families — like every other ultra-Orthodox community worldwide, where, in tested rabbinical tradition, it is only the best and the brightest students for whom Torah learning is their full-time, subsidized occupation. • As for the key players — Netanyahu and his rival Benny Gantz — clearly they failed to reach the compromises that could have averted this third vote. • But that’s where I begin to wonder whether the resort to a third election is the complete disaster we’re all assuming it to be. • Elections are designed to be decisive. We don’t have time to run our democracies ourselves, so we have systems designed to install a new batch of competent people every few years to do so on our behalf. Clearly, that hasn’t been working for us in the past year — even though, in Israel, we have an electoral system that so purely and accurately represents the will of the voter. It’s not like America, where only a few states are really in play. It’s not like in Britain, where parties can win millions of votes and get no seats in parliament. It’s a system where every vote counts. Undiluted proportional representation. • But rather than look at round three of elections as proof of that system’s failure and paralysis, perhaps, in its purity, it is enabling the electorate to work through the hugely sensitive decision of who should lead this country, and thus how and where it should be led, a little more protractedly than is the norm. Perhaps our system is actually working for us rather than against us. • For we now head into our third round of elections better equipped than in rounds one and two to make an informed decision. • Our unprecedentedly long-serving prime minister has now been charged, and his alleged offenses described in detail by the head of the state prosecution. We know now that Netanyahu intends to battle out his legal storm; he won’t willingly quit; he hasn’t ruled out a bid to both obtain parliamentary immunity from prosecution and then legislate to prevent the Supreme Court overturning such immunity; he has declared himself the victim of an attempted coup and encouraged the electorate to believe his narrative of innocence and to mistrust Israel’s law enforcement. The choice Netanyahu now presents to the electorate is far starker than it was in April or even September.

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• We’ve also heard Likud loyalist David Bitan say that this is “Netanyahu’s last chance” to muster a majority, and seen Gideon Sa’ar become the first Likud MK in more than a decade to begin to mount a challenge to Netanyahu. We know that Blue and White leader Gantz was ultimately unwilling to sit in government with Netanyahu, and that Gantz’s deputy Yair Lapid has given up for now on his dream of the prime ministership. By voting day, we’ll know how the parties to the right of Likud have rearranged themselves, and whether the Kahanists of have inched deeper into the political mainstream; whether Labor and , however they call themselves, have put aside their relatively minor differences and merged. We’re aware that the Arab sector chose, between April and September, not to self- disenfranchise after all. • Our politicians have been tested twice, we’re about to test them again, and that might just enable us to make a more definitive decision. March 2, 2020, may stand as the date when Israel completed its incremental separation from its longest-serving prime minister, or when it decided that it still couldn’t live without him. • Let’s face it, we don’t always make the right decisions at the first time of asking. Remember that car you bought? That house? It’s not always easy to get it right. (Marriage and divorce emphatically do not belong in this analogy; in a democracy, prime ministers and coalitions are not for life.) • Between them, our electorate, our system and our politicians have combined to force us to a third election in less than a year. We might not like it, but ultimately, in our purest of systems, we chose it; we did it to ourselves. • It’s certainly no luxury, but Election 3 is our creation. And maybe — third time’s a charm? — we’ll finally manage to make up our collective mind.

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