Israel and the Middle East News Update

Monday, July 29

Headlines: • Right-Wing Parties Announce Broad Union Led by Shaked • After Shaffir Defects, Shmuli Says He Won’t Abandon Labor • 's Arab Parties Unite to Make Gains in Upcoming Vote • Netanyahu Touts Friendship with Putin in New Billboard • Netanyahu Plans Diplomatic Blitz Before Election • Israel, U.S. Carry Out Successful Test of Arrow-3 Over Alaska • Israel Invests in High-Tech Upgrades at West Bank Crossings • Relocation of Foreign Embassies to Jerusalem to be Top National Goal

Commentary: • Times of Israel: “Nobody Hijacked Israel. It’s Just Not What its Pioneers Thought They’d Created” (Interview with Matti Friedman) − By Amnon Abramovitch • New York Times: “The Last Thing Israel Needs Is Yet Another Election” − By Shmuel Rosner

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 July 29, 2019 Ha’aretz Right-Wing Parties Announce Broad Union Led by Shaked Former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Education Minister Rafi Peretz announced on Sunday that their parties will run on a joint slate led by Shaked, following weeks of speculations and pressure to form a broad union ahead of Israel's September election. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara pressured Peretz not to join forces with Shaked and Naftali Bennett. Peretz is now to take second spot on slate, followed by Bezalel Smotrich and Bennett. As of now Kahanist party Otzma Yehudit is not part of the union. See also, “Israeli right unites and Arab parties recreate joint list” (BICOM)

Times of Israel After Shaffir Defects, Shmuli Says He Won’t Abandon Labor Labor MK Itzik Shmuli on Sunday said he was sticking with the venerable center-left party for the upcoming elections and did not intend to jump ship in the wake of fellow party member ’s high-profile defection to the new Democratic Camp alliance. “The Labor Party is my home and even when there are disagreements and arguments, I remain committed and won’t abandon it during difficult moments,” Shmuli said in a series of tweets. Labor’s No. 2 lawmaker said that while he would have preferred that the party join an alliance of left-wing factions, party leader Amir Peretz — “who was chosen democratically” by Labor members — opted to go in a different direction, joining forces with Orly Levy-Abekasis’s right-wing Gesher party.

Ynet News Israel's Arab Parties Unite to Make Gains in Upcoming Vote Israel's four Arab political parties have announced a merger ahead of September 17 elections, hoping to boost turnout among the Arab minority, which makes up a fifth of Israel's population. Hadash, Ta'al and Ra'am parties, that have announced their reformation during a press conference on Saturday, were joined by the fourth and the most nationalistic Arab party - Balad - to reunite the Joint List. The merger came days before this week's deadline for Israeli political parties to finalize their lineups before the elections. Ayman Odeh, head of the Hadash party, said Monday that now that the parties have reunited, they can address the "great challenge" facing the country's Arab minority.

Times of Israel Netanyahu Touts Friendship with Putin in New Billboard Knowingly or not, Russia President Vladimir Putin has been recruited to the Israeli election campaign, appearing alongside Prime Minister Netanyahu on a large billboard Sunday visible to thousands of drivers during rush hour on central ’s Ayalon highway. The poster hanging on Likud party headquarters shows the two leaders shaking hands under the slogan “Netanyahu: In another league.” The campaign comes as the ruling party targets Russian speaking voters, who make up 12 percent — or some 770,000 — of the 6.3 million eligible voters in Israel, amid a rift with the Israeli-Russian Yisrael Beytenu party. 2

Yedioth Ahronoth Netanyahu Plans Diplomatic Blitz Before Election Taking his cue from the previous elections, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is planning a “diplomatic blitz” in the run-up to the next elections, and he will meet with a series of leaders around the world. The prime minister is expected to visit India and Ukraine in the immediate run-up to the elections. The central meeting that is being planned is to be held on September 9—a week before the elections—in India as the guest of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Prime Minister’s Bureau is also holding talks to coordinate a visit by a senior South Korean official in Israel to sign a free trade agreement between the two countries.

Jerusalem Post Israel, U.S. Carry Out Successful Test of Arrow-3 Over Alaska In the face of Iran’s continued development of long-range missiles, Israel and the U.S. completed a series of tests of the long-range Arrow 3 ballistic missile defense system at the Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska, which included the successful interception of an “enemy” target. The series of tests over the course of 10 days saw three successful interceptions. It was the first time that such a test took place outside of Israel. The successful test was attended by Israel’s ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer. The system was tested against targets similar in behavior to advanced ballistic missiles being developed by Iran, and against future threats that Israel may face. SEE ALSO, “NETANYAHU: EXECUTION OF ARROW 3 ANTI-MISSILE 'PERFECT'” (JPOST)

Ynet News Israel Invests in High-Tech Upgrades at West Bank Crossings It's just after 6 a.m. and a Palestinian man's face is momentarily bathed in crimson light, not by the sun rising over the mountains of Jordan, but by a facial recognition scanner at an Israeli checkpoint near Jerusalem. The Israeli military has installed the face scanners as part a multimillion dollar upgrade of the Qalandia crossing that now allows Palestinians from the West Bank with work permits to zip through with relative ease. Qalandia is one of the main crossings for the thousands of Palestinians who enter Israel each day. Israel's Defense Ministry poured over $85 million into upgrading Qalandia and several other major checkpoints between Israel and the West Bank in recent years -- part of a strategy it says is meant to maintain calm by improving conditions for Palestinians.

Israel Hayom Relocation of Foreign Embassies to J’lm to be Top National Goal A first-ever orderly government plan has now been drafted to have foreign countries relocate and open their embassies in Jerusalem. Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz will shortly present the cabinet with a bill that defines the relocation of foreign embassies to Jerusalem as a “national, political and strategic goal of the first order.” Katz has assembled an array of measures and incentives that are designed to encourage foreign countries to open an embassy in Jerusalem. Upon assuming his duties as foreign minister, Katz learned that there are several countries that have agreed in principle to relocate their embassies in Israel to Jerusalem, but want remuneration from Israel for so doing. For example, Honduras and El Salvador agreed to open embassies in Jerusalem, but demanded that Israel open full embassies in their capitals in return—an action that Israel has not yet taken.

3

Times of Israel – July 29, 2019 ‘Nobody Hijacked Israel. It’s Just Not What its Pioneers Thought They’d Created’ – Interview with Matti Friedman By David Horovitz • Israel is in the Middle East. • That may sound like one of the more banal opening sentences to an article, but it’s a fact, argues Matti Friedman, that seems to continually elude many commentators and critics of Israel, many Diaspora Jews who pronounce themselves baffled by some of Israel’s actions and policies, and, indeed, many Israelis themselves. • Friedman, 41, is an acclaimed Canadian-born Israeli author who recently published a most unusual book, “Spies of No Country,” about Israeli espionage at the time of the state’s founding — unusual in that its protagonists are Israelis born in the Arab world who ventured back there, into what was at once familiar and highly dangerous territory, in the service of the nascent state. Friedman chose to focus on the heroes of what was sometimes known as “the Black Section” of Israel’s bare-bones initial intelligence apparatus because, he told The Times of Israel in an interview last week, “I thought we needed stories that better reflect the real Israel — not just stories of secular Ashkenazi pioneers and survivors of Warsaw.” • That “real” Israel, Friedman argues, is the Middle Eastern Israel, Israel as “part of the continuum of Judaism in the Muslim world.” The more you understand and internalize that, he says, the better you understand this country — everything from its cuisine and its music to its behavior and, crucially, its politics. • Which is why it seemed like a good idea to interview Friedman just as Benjamin Netanyahu overtook David Ben-Gurion as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister — chiefly, says Friedman, because Netanyahu so well recognizes the cutthroat, merciless reality of Israel’s Middle East location — and as the combined forces of the center and left try, yet again, to alight on a formula to defeat him in the year’s second general election. (Full disclosure: I have worked and been friendly with Friedman for almost as long as he has lived in Israel.) • The Times of Israel: There’s a striking section toward the end of your book where you write that “Israel in this century makes sense only through a Middle Eastern lens, which is one reason that Westerners find it harder and harder to figure out.” You yourself have been on this learning curve, gradually internalizing what you’ve come to regard as this misunderstood Israeli reality? • Matti Friedman: I came from the West, with the European stories of Israel — the kibbutz, the Holocaust… The longer you’re here, the more you realize those stories don’t fully represent Israel. Half the country came from the Muslim world, and that informs everything about Israel — cuisine, behavior, music, religion, politics. Many Israelis think the basis of the country is the European Jewish world — Herzl and Ben-Gurion — and that the Jews of the Middle East then came and joined that story. I think it’s the opposite: Israel is part of the continuum of Judaism in the Muslim world, together with the remnants of European Jewry.

4

• And the Jews of European origin are becoming more Mizrahi here — in their behavior, their attitude to religion. Your Israeli kids are more Middle Eastern than you if you are a Western immigrant. It’s hard to wrap our heads around that. • Many people try to gauge the country through these outmoded categories: religious or secular, for instance, when most Israelis are neither; right and left — again, when most Israelis are neither. • Times of Israel: And rather we are? • Matti Friedman: On Judaism, we’re generally traditional. The pollsters ask: Are you religious or secular. So people try to answer. But do most Israelis light Shabbat eve candles? Yes. Believe in God? Yes. Believe in the power of prayer. Yes. • That’s all very Middle Eastern. In the Middle East, people aren’t “religious” or “secular.” • As for “right” or “left,” in the 1990s, there was the notion of territorial compromise, the notion that rapprochement is possible; that it’s in our hands [to solve the conflict with the Palestinians and the Arab world]. • Times of Israel: And that’s not true? No regional rapprochement is possible? • Matti Friedman: Of course not. There’s regional war, and we’re a small player. • Times of Israel: Regional war between? • Matti Friedman: Dozens of different actors, including dictators and the people they’ve been oppressing; Shiite versus Sunni; the various proxies of Iran and Saudi Arabia; medievalists and modernists, and other smaller conflicts including the one between much of the region and Israel. Belgium, obviously, could not engineer rapprochement in Europe in 1915; the same is true when it comes to the notion that Israel can achieve rapprochement in the Middle East in 2019. • Generally speaking, the Israelis with roots in the Islamic world always saw this. In general, they were always politically on the right and skeptical about the possibilities the left saw. • On the left, there was the belief that rational self-interest and modern ideas of progress would prevail. No. In 2019, it’s clear that the Middle Eastern perspective is closer to reality. • Times of Israel: So now, as we head again to elections, who gets this? • Matti Friedman: The right understands this better, and that is the reason for their success. The right successfully taps into fears — rational fears, too often belittled by the left — of what this region does to the weak. • It also understands the importance of traditional Judaism even to those who don’t call themselves religious or Orthodox. • And it taps into the residual anger over how Jews from the Middle East were treated here. That anger still comes out — in ways that aren’t always productive, but which are understandable. You see it, for example, in [Culture Minister] Miri Regev’s war on the cultural elites. • Netanyahu, and before him, spoke to those memories. 5

• Some of the people who have traditionally affiliated with the left, with the so-called elites, are gravely disappointed: They imagined Israel being Vienna. And it’s much closer to Alexandria. It’s not socialist. It’s not secular. It’s Middle Eastern. It makes perfect sense that it’s a lot more like Alexandria, but lots of people are very disappointed by that. When you hear anger at “the right” or “the religious,” often it’s really about this. They ask: Who are these people from the Middle East who hijacked our country? • Talk to Israelis, and you’ll hear that most people don’t really differ on what to do here vis a vis the Arab world. There’s the hard-core left of Meretz; four seats out of 120. The rest are in a muddle. In no hurry to pull out of the West Bank because of the feared consequences. The terrible years of suicide bombings during the Second Intifada don’t get talked about all that much, but it’s deep in the Israeli psyche. Those years were what discredited the old political elite that had roots in the optimism of the kibbutz movement, and permanently killed the left. The years of attacks showed Israelis what the Middle East is, and why optimistic Western templates don’t apply here. To many of us it came as a rude surprise. • Times of Israel: So Netanyahu wins again in September? • Matti Friedman: Only a fool predicts. These elections are quite unpredictable. A second election within months of the last is unprecedented. • But Netanyahu is incredibly competent. He’s intelligent. He’s an ugly politician, who knows how to push people’s buttons. And he’s helped by the naiveté, perceived or genuine, of the “old left.” He says to Israelis, there’s a room. And in that room are the likes of Putin and Assad and Khamenei. Who do you want in there? A straight shooter who believes in the fundamental goodness of humanity? Or your most wily representative? Many Israelis say yes, the latter. That’s who we want in that room. It’s not about decency. It’s about having the most competent person to protect us. I would personally never vote for Netanyahu, but I understand that appeal. And his ability to speak to people’s resentments means you can’t count him out. • Times of Israel: What about Labor’s new leader Amir Peretz? He was born in Morocco. Does he better understand the Middle East? • Matti Friedman: He’s an ex-mayor of Sderot [on the Gaza border]. He was born in North Africa. His first move was to bring on another person who can speak to the same issues: Orly Levy, the daughter of one of the first prominent Israeli politicians from North Africa, [the former Likud foreign minister] David Levy. • But we’ve been here before. She didn’t get in to the Knesset in the April elections. He’s already led Labor. Maybe they’ll draw some more votes. But the politician who really has the lock on understanding all this is Netanyahu. • Netanyahu says, This is an incredibly dangerous region, and I will keep you safe. • Netanyahu says, You were mistreated by the elites. I am mistreated by the elites, by the media, by the judiciary [in the corruption cases he’s facing]. • Many people from a Middle Eastern background will not vote Labor, no matter who is leading it. The idea that the Peretz-Levy alliance will somehow catapult Labor back into the front ranks is fanciful.

6

New York Times – July 24, 2019 The Last Thing Israel Needs Is Yet Another Election But that’s what it’s going to get unless its politicians learn to compromise. By Shmuel Rosner • TEL AVIV — This is a good year for Israelis who love political statistics. This month, Benjamin Netanyahu surpassed Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, to become the country’s longest-serving prime minister. On May 30, the Knesset dissolved itself a month after it was sworn in, making its parliamentary term the shortest in Israel’s history. This year will be the first ever with two Election Days, the one in April, the second in September. • But we might be ready to set an even more impressive record: a third election. • Explaining why Israel was forced to have a second round is technically simple: Mr. Netanyahu needed the support of 61 members of the Knesset to form a ruling coalition, but only 60 were willing to join. No other party was even close to getting this number of supporters. Trying for a new parliament was the obvious, if unhappy, solution. • A do-over election should mean one of two things. Either more people will vote for a coalition led by Mr. Netanyahu, or more people will vote for a coalition led by someone else. Unfortunately, according to the polls, neither is about to happen. • The coalition Mr. Netanyahu wishes to have is the same one he’s always relied on, with his Likud party at the helm and right-wing and religious parties as allies. This constellation of parties is expected to take fewer than 61 seats. But the coalition of those wanting to unseat Mr. Netanyahu has no realistic path to forming a government, either. For now, the voters cannot be convinced to move from one political bloc to the other. Right-wing voters stay on the right, centrists and leftists stay on the center-left. No one seems to be able to break the stalemate. • A third vote would not be a charm. It would be detrimental to Israel in many ways. In fact, even a second round has been detrimental. The last time Israel had a fully functioning parliament (and government) was last November. The earliest Israel could again have a fully functioning parliament (and government) is next October. • That’s almost a year of wasted political time. More rounds of consecutive elections mean more public money invested in politics rather than the public’s good, more bickering and bad feelings, more voter fatigue and disillusionment, more distrust in the institutions of democracy. • Why doesn’t Mr. Netanyahu seek out different coalition partners? The centrist Blue and White party is expected to be the strongest opposition party in the coming Knesset and a unity government of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud and Blue and White would likely be popular among Israelis, a majority of whom believe Mr. Netanyahu is the most fit to lead but don’t have much love for his past coalition partners, especially the ultra-Orthodox.

7

• But that’s not the plan of either party because of several factors. First, Mr. Netanyahu wants to form a government with his usual allies, the right-wing and religious parties, in part for political reasons: This alliance is easier for him to control, and it has kept Likud in power for many years. • But he also has personal reasons: This fall, the attorney general is expected to indict Mr. Netanyahu on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The prime minister wants a coalition that will support him through his legal troubles — that is, one that shields him by voting for immunity, or at least lets him keep his job until the end of a long trial, as is legally permitted. He believes, probably correctly, that his traditional right-wing and religious allies would offer him that protection. • Moreover, Blue and White has said it won’t join a government led by Mr. Netanyahu under any circumstances. He is “no longer an option,” Benny Gantz, Blue and White’s leader, has said. This is not because of ideological differences or competing policy prescriptions. This is about Benjamin Netanyahu. • Blue and White is willing to form a coalition with Likud, as long as Mr. Netanyahu is no longer the party’s leader. Blue and White’s politicians say that they won’t work with the prime minister because of the likely indictment against him, but there is a lot more to it than that. For many Israelis, Mr. Netanyahu is the personification of their political grievances and social frustrations. • So this is where Israel now finds itself: preparing for a second election that appears likely to deliver the same political stalemate as the first, and with the two leading parties seemingly unable to avoid a disastrous third election. • There are two clear ways to overcome these obstacles. One is for Mr. Netanyahu to step aside and allow a coalition to form without him. The other is for Blue and White to accept that working with Mr. Netanyahu, the most popular politician in Israel, is a necessity. • Both options would require the leaders of Likud and of Blue and White to learn to compromise on important principles. For Likud’s politicians, this could mean an end to a proud tradition of always being loyal to the party’s leader. If Mr. Netanyahu is the obstacle to stability, they ought to cast him aside as they form a coalition. For the leaders of Blue and White, this could mean an end to their high-minded vows never to sit in a Netanyahu government. • Deciding between these two options won’t be easy. And yet, there is a grudging realization among Israel’s leading politicians that one side — the outcome of the election will determine which of the two — will have to accept the need for a much greater flexibility. It might not seem like the most dignified act, but Israel’s politicians must prevent a third election — for the good of the country. Shmuel Rosner (@rosnersdomain) is the political editor at The Jewish Journal, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and a contributing opinion writer.

8