Israel and Middle East News Update

Thursday, February 4

Headlines: ● Yesh Atid, Yamina, Blue & White File Their Election Slates ● PM Appoints Czar to Counter Violence in Arab Sector ● IDF Razes Khirbet Humsa Twice in One Week ● IDF: Drone Comes Under Fire Over Lebanese Skies ● Conditioning PM's Visit on 2-State Solution Gesture ● Netanyahu Again Cancels Scheduled Trips to UAE, Bahrain ● UN Chief Hopes Mideast Quartet Can Meet Within Few Weeks ● Biden Administration Makes First Call to Turkey

Commentary: ● Newsweek: “Why Should Accept a New – Better – Iran Deal’’ - By Ephraim Sneh, chairman of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Strategic Dialogue, Netanya Academic College

● Ma’ariv: “A Different Middle East’’ - By Itzhak Levanon, former Israeli who served as Ambassador to Egypt

S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace 1725 I St NW Suite 300, Washington, DC 20006 The Hon. Robert Wexler, President Editor: Yousef Bashir News Excerpts February 4, 2021 Times of Israel Yesh Atid, Yamina, Blue & White File Their Election Slates Registration opened for parties to submit their lists of candidates in the upcoming Knesset elections, with several major parties unveiling their slates and several small parties quitting the race. The slates can be handed to the Central Elections Committee until Thursday at midnight, meaning that parties have just one day left to finalize potential mergers, or to announce they aren’t running. The first party to submit its slate was the center-left Yesh Atid, which is shaping up in opinion polls to be the main challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership as the second-largest party after Likud. The filing of the candidate list means the party has ruled out any mergers. Dig Deeper ‘‘Netanyahu Names Ex-Breitbart Journalist as His Campaign Chief’’ (Times of Israel)

Ynet News PM Appoints Czar to Counter Violence in Arab Sector Netanyahu appointed the former head of the Israel Prison Service as a czar to counter violence in the Arab sector. Violence has been ravaging the Arab communities in recent month, with local residents and some lawmakers accusing the government of not doing enough to prevent it. The appointment of Aharon Franco, however, caused a stir among some Arab officials due to remarks he made in 2009 while serving as Commander of the District Police, when he called the Arab community "ungrateful". MK Ahmad Tibi, from the predominantly-Arab Joint list, said Franco should undergo a course "in democracy and equality values." Head of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee Muhammad Zidan said it's "incomprehensible that a police chief would say such a thing," referring to the 2009 comments. Dig Deeper ‘‘Netanyahu: 'A Plan That Will Bring About Real Revolution in Arab Society'’ (Jerusalem Post)

Jerusalem Post IDF Razes Khirbet Humsa Twice in One Week The Civil Administration attempted to raze tents in the illegal Palestinian herding village of Khirbat Humsa twice in one week. The Civil Administration initially destroyed a small village of 18 tents and modular structures located in the Jordan Valley in November, according to the left- wing group B’Tselem. It returned again to remove 13 tents which the families had rebuilt, as well as shacks and tents for livestock, B’Tselem reported. The families returned to the area, as did the Civil Administration which removed 7 tents that housed 9 families. The Civil Administration said that the village had been illegally built in an IDF firing zone. It explained that it had met with residents of Khirbat Humsa prior to the evacuation, described how dangerous it was to live in a firing zone and offered to relocate the families to another area. Dig Deeper ‘‘High Court Approves Demolition of Confessed Terrorist's Home’’ (Ynet News)

2 Associated Press IDF: Drone Comes Under Fire Over Lebanese Skies An Israeli drone came under fire during a routine operation over the skies of , the IDF said. It was the latest sign of rising tensions between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah. Israeli warplanes and drones violate Lebanon’s airspace almost daily, sometimes to carry out airstrikes against Hezbollah-allied Iranian targets in Syria. Residents of southern reported low-flying Israeli reconnaissance aircraft buzzing overhead. The area is a stronghold of Hezbollah. Israel accuses Hezbollah of violating the terms of a UN cease-fire and says its overflights are needed to keep an eye on the group. Lebanon has routinely complained to the UN about Israel’s daily violations of its airspace and mock raids. Israeli officials say Hezbollah has amassed a stockpile of 150,000 rockets and missiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel. Dig Deeper ‘‘Prominent Hezbollah Critic Shot Dead, Lebanese Security Official Says’’ (Times of Israel)

Times of Israel Egypt Conditioning PM's Visit on 2-State Solution Gesture Netanyahu reportedly wants to fit an official visit to Egypt ahead of the approaching elections. A visit was scheduled to go ahead a month ago, but after the Knesset dissolved at the end of December, triggering elections, the Egyptians put the idea on hold. When contacts were resumed, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi made his demand that Netanyahu issue a declaration about Palestinian statehood before the visit or during the visit or make some practical gesture on the ground to aid the Palestinians. However, Netanyahu has reportedly balked at taking any such action in the run-up to the elections, in which he will aim to win support from right-wing voters who are generally opposed to the idea of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu’s last public visit to Egypt was a decade ago when Hosni Mubarak was still in power. Since then, he has made several covert visits, according to Walla. Dig Deeper ‘‘Sisi Conditions Netanyahu Visit to Egypt on Support for 2-State Solution’’ (Axios)

I24 News Netanyahu Again Cancels Scheduled Trips to UAE, Bahrain Netanyahu was forced once again to cancel an official trip to the UAE and Bahrain due to the shuttering of Ben Gurion Airport stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. The development marks the third time Netanyahu has canceled planned visits to the Gulf Arab nations due to coronavirus- related restrictions or political considerations. Netanyahu had originally planned a three-day trip where he was expected to visit Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, as well as Manama, Bahrain next week, but decided to shorten it to three hours over COVID-19 variant concerns. On January 24, Israel moved to shutter Ben Gurion Airport and restrict all incoming and outgoing flights. Originally scheduled to last only a week, the Israeli cabinet voted to extend the decision and is currently in talks to keep the transportation hub closed until the spread of the virus declines. Dig Deeper ‘‘Netanyahu Scraps UAE, Bahrain Trip Over COVID-19 Restrictions’’ (Jerusalem Post)

3 Ynet News UN Chief Hopes Mideast Quartet Can Meet Within Few Weeks UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on he hopes to see the Middle East Quartet of mediators meet again in the next "few weeks" now that there is a new US president in the White House. The Quartet - the United States, Russia, the European Union and the - does not appear to have had a meeting since September 2018. "The truth is that we were completely blocked-in relation to any form of peace negotiation. We had the Israelis and the Palestinians that wouldn't talk to each other," Guterres said during an interview broadcast by The Washington Post. The new administration of President Joe Biden supports a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians and will overturn several decisions made under his predecessor, Donald Trump, the acting US envoy to the United Nations told the Security Council last week. "There is a strong will of the new US administration to play a positive role in creating these conditions for a true peace process to restart," Guterres said. "I believe that now it will be possible to have a meeting of the Quartet," he said. "I would like to see it in the next few weeks."

Al-Monitor Biden Administration Makes First Call to Turkey Top adviser to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Ibrahim Kalin spoke to Jake Sullivan for nearly an hour on in the first official communication between the NATO allies since former President Trump left office. Sullivan and Kalin discussed building US-Turkey ties and “managing disagreements effectively,” according to a White House press release. Relations between the two allies have remained thorny since Turkey’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defense system in 2017, a matter Sullivan discussed with his counterpart. The US national security advisor also voiced his government’s support for exploratory talks between Turkey and Greece to resolve disputes in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and said Washington supports a planned resumption of United Nations- led talks on the status of Cyprus. The Turkish state-run media reported the pair also discussed the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and the COVID-19 pandemic. On Syria, the two discussed the potential negative humanitarian impact of a renewed Syrian government offensive in Idlib. Kalin also stressed the need to “find a solution” to the allies’ disagreement over US support for the Kurdish-led factions in northeast Syria, which Washington armed and trained in the fight against the Islamic State but officials in Ankara consider terrorists.

4 Newsweek – February 4, 2021 Why Israel Should Accept a new –Better– Iran Deal By Ephraim Sneh ● The many people anxiously waiting to hear whether -- or really, how --- the Biden Administration plans to reenter the Iran Deal, scrapped by President Trump, got a hint last Wednesday from Secretary of State Anthony Blinken: The Biden administration would seek to build a "longer and stronger agreement" with Iran that would deal with other "deeply problematic issues" if Iran "comes back into full compliance," Blinken told reporters. Perhaps no one is watching this as anxiously as the Israelis. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fiercely opposed the Iran Deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and made every attempt to initially block it during the Obama Administration. But it would be a mistake to repeat this move. Responsible Israelis should support Biden's return to a substantially improved Iran nuclear deal. For starters, Israel cannot prevent this step. But it would also be a mistake to try. Blunt criticism of Washington's moves will make rebuilding Israel's relationship with the Democratic administration even harder. Enough damage has been done to the Israeli- American bond by Prime Minister Netanyahu's behavior towards the Obama administration, as well as by his intimate political partnership with former President Trump. But this does not mean Israel should remain silent. The opposite: Israel should accept a renegotiated Iran deal. But it should do so on four conditions. ● Demand Realism: The first is for the administration's Iran team to undertake a realistic, sober examination of the Iranian regime, its strategic objectives and the methods it is taking to obtain them. This means no naïve illusions about the "victory of the moderates" in Teheran nor about "not changing the regime, changing its behavior." US policy- makers must understand that this regime is based on religious ideology: the extremist interpretation of the Islamic religion. Its strategic vision is regional hegemony, with subsequent hopes of becoming a global power leading the entire Muslim world population. Teheran's approach is very pragmatic when it pursues these goals: It takes over state after state in the region by empowering local militias. Iran fully supports them, militarily and financially, and they are becoming a dominant political force, in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Gaza. ● And though it despises Sunni Islam, it supports Sunni militias as long as these organizations fight against US, Israel and Sunni governments. You can see this pragmatism at work when Iran signed the nuclear agreement in 2015, Teheran postponed the realization of its nuclear objective in order to attain the international legitimacy it badly needed and to get its hands on the funds necessary to finance regional subversion and continue its military buildup. But western democracies must oppose both Iran's global and its regional aspirations. Iran achieving regional hegemony would mean that many millions of people in the Middle East would live in hopeless poverty and in cultural obscurity. Western democracies cannot allow this without abandoning their most important values.

5 ● Demand Recognition: Israel's acceptance of a renegotiated Iran deal should be conditioned on the Biden administration legitimizing Israelis' fears, rather than ignoring them. Our concerns are based on our distant and recent history; in living memory, our grandparents and parents experienced unimaginable calamity, which succeeded through a combination of hatred, ideology and military might. More than half a century later, in 2006, thousands of rockets were launched from Lebanon at Israel's towns and villages, and dozens of Israelis killed. This was done at Iran's behest. And the thousands of rockets and missiles fired into Israel from Gaza since the Islamist takeover in 2007 were also supplied by Iran, directly or indirectly. These attacks were also levied thanks to a lethal combination of hatred, ideology, and military might. In his book Palestine, Ali Khamenei, the Iranian spiritual leader, explains how Israel will be wiped out. It will be encircled by territories that will serve as mega launching pads of rockets and missiles aimed at the civilian population centers, and under this massive barrage, the Mullahs believe Israeli society to implode. This is not an empty threat. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has 150,000 missiles and rockets ready to be fired upon us. From Gaza, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have more than 10,000 aimed at the heart of Israel. All are supplied by Iran. Many can reach Tel Aviv. And Iran is now seriously at work cultivating its third launching platform – Syria. To understand our fears, Americans should imagine that four million rockets are aimed at New York and Los Angeles from bases in Canada and Mexico. ● Don't Keep Allies in the Dark: That President Biden is a true friend of Israel prompts a third condition: Don't leave Israelis in the dark while negotiating with Iran. Consult with us and with your allies in the Gulf. I became instantly less worried when Blinken, then Secretary-designate, said in his confirmation hearings that such consultations are "vitally important." The US and Israel sharing intelligence benefits both sides enormously. ● In Case of Failure, Back Israel's Response: In case diplomacy fails, and Iran gets close to acquiring a nuclear weapon or poses a direct and imminent conventional weapons threat to Israel, a fourth condition is required: US diplomatic backing of Israel for the measures any responsible government will be forced to take, on its own, to remove the threat. We Israelis don't want a single American soldier to risk his or her life for us. Instead, we need the kind of partnership and communication that let us know we are listened to and diplomatically supported by our friends in the international community. We should be able to accomplish the needed mission to defend ourselves by ourselves. But there is also something the Biden administration must ask of Israel: Stop the threat of annexation. For some Israeli politicians, the West Bank settlements are more important even than thwarting Iran's ambitions. The Biden administration must not silently appease them in the mistaken belief that this will serve as a quid pro quo -- the US not opposing creeping annexation in exchange for Israel not opposing an American dialogue with Iran. The West Bank, as well as Gaza, are time bombs at our doorstep. The Biden administration must support a two-state solution and convey zero tolerance for any annexation measures which would stave off an agreed solution and may detonate the time bombs.

6 Ma’ariv – February 4, 2021 A Different Middle East By Itzhak Levanon ● If the recent reports as if Syrian President Bashar Assad agreed to meet with senior Israeli officials are correct, we may be on the cusp of an important strategic development in which President Assad will depart from the policies that were pursued by his father and which bound his country’s fate to the Iranians, contrary to the wishes of all the Arab countries at the time. Muhammad Sarmini, a Syrian exile who is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded the Jusoor for Studies institute, which operates in Turkey and London. It reported recently that the Russians had successfully arranged a meeting of high-ranking Israeli and Syrian officials in a Russian airbase in Syria. While that report is obviously baseless, Moscow nevertheless chose to deny it publicly. ● An informed Russian political official denied the report to me but did say that Russia has continued to try to bring about talks between Syria and Israel in hope of resolving the current situation between the two countries. Meanwhile, Lebanese media outlets have reported about mounting tensions between President Assad and his allies, Iran and Hezbollah, neither of which have taken a positive view of the possibility that Assad might hold talks with Israel. Tensions between them escalated to the point of implicit threats being made in both directions. Hezbollah claimed that the Syrians were linked to the explosion last August that destroyed nearly the entire Beirut port. Nasrallah accused Syria of smuggling diesel, medicine and dollars out of Lebanon. Damascus responded with insinuations of its own about how Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut, the Dahiya, was vulnerable to attacks. ● The Russian political official said that Moscow would like to promote an Israeli-Syrian dialogue. Russia is prepared to do so in stages and, as a first stage, to host non-binding meetings so as to try to establish where there is common ground and where the differences between the sides lie. At a second stage, Russia would like to see binding talks held by the sides. All of the parties involved are aware that now is not the time for binding talks. Israel will be holding a general election in March, and Syria will be holding a presidential election in April. Given that state of affairs, the Russians would be happy to see the two sides hold non-binding preliminary talks. ● According to Jusoor’s report, the purpose of the meetings was to take steps to prevent Iranian influence on the Syrian side of the Golan border. UNDOF, which is responsible for supervising the disengagement agreement between the two countries, was enlisted to help as well. Increasing the number of UNDOF troops will help keep the Iranians away, as Israel has requested. Assad knows that the international community is no longer demanding that he step down as a precondition for ending the civil war in his country. To end that war, he is going to need to form closer relations with the West and the Arab countries that have normalized relations with Israel. He is going to want massive financial aid from them to help rebuild Syria.

7 ● Assad has it within his power to curtail Iran’s influence in Syria. If after the elections in Israel and in Syria Assad decides to accede to the Russians’ requests and to hold talks with Israel, that will produce a substantive change in the region—a change that Israel needs to begin to prepare for. The first stage needs to be holding in-depth talks with the Russians.

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