Israel and Middle East News Update

Thursday, July 8

Headlines: ● to Petition Supreme Court Against Subsidy Cuts ● In Coalition Boost, Okays Budget Extension ● Inaugurates Isaac Herzog as Its 11th President ● Israel Invites Moroccan FM to First Israel Visit ● Bennett to Review Iran Policy Prior to Biden Meeting ● Israel Tears Down Bedouin Tents in Palestinian Village ● King Abdullah to Be First Mideast Leader to Visit Biden ● Ahmed Jibril, Head of Palestinian Radical Group, Dies at 83

Commentary: ● Yedioth Ahronoth: “An End to Naïveté’’ - By Nadav Eyal

● Yedioth Ahronoth: “The Triumph of Populism’’ - By Chen Artzi-Sror

S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace 1725 I St NW Suite 300, Washington, DC 20006 The Hon. Robert Wexler, President News Excerpts July 8, 2021 Arutz Sheva Shas to Petition Supreme Court Against Subsidy Cuts Shas will petition the Supreme Court against Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman's decision to changing the eligibility criteria for daycare subsidies in a manner which would limit the subsidies to the families of yeshiva students. Shas will argue that Liberman's decision is illegal and discriminates against the families of yeshiva students. Under the new criteria, government funding will only be available to families in which the mother's partner works at least 24/hrs each week. Currently, the 24/hr minimum applies only to the mother. In addition, it was decided that subsidies will be provided for those families in which one parent is acquiring higher education or other training which will allow improved integration into the job market in the future. The new decree will deprive18,000 families with 21,000 children of $122m in subsidies per year, as of September 1, 2021. Dig Deeper ‘‘Liberman Ends Yeshiva Students' Childcare Subsidies, Haredim Outraged’’ (Jerusalem Post)

Times of Israel In Coalition Boost, Knesset Okays Budget Extension A night after the coalition was dealt a major blow by the Knesset failing to approve an extension of the contentious Palestinian family reunification law, it succeeded in passing key laws that could facilitate the work of its 61 MKs officially in the coalition. Most significantly, Knesset members voted to extend the deadline for the government to pass a budget, giving it three months from the beginning of the budget year or 145 days from the date of the formation of the government, whichever is later. This means that under normal circumstances, instead of the Knesset being dissolved if the budget does not pass by January 1, lawmakers will be able to pass the budget by June 31 of each year. In the case of the new coalition, which was sworn in on June 13, it will now have until November 4 to pass the 2021 budget. Dig Deeper ‘‘Israeli Government's Arab Party Pays Dearly for Place in Coalition’’ (Al-Monitor)

I24 News Israel Inaugurates Isaac Herzog as Its 11th President Isaac Herzog, a veteran of Israel's Labor party, was sworn in before the Knesset as Israel's 11th president, replacing in the largely ceremonial post. With his left hand on a Torah and his right raised, Herzog said he was "humbled and thrilled" and vowed to be "everyone's president." He bemoaned polarization in Israeli society and the "unprecedented crisis" in its politics. The Israeli president exerts little power, with the prime minister wielding executive authority. The presidency however assumed an outsized role during Israel's unprecedented spate of four elections in less than two years. The president is charged with selecting the lawmaker best placed to form a government, a closely-watched process after Israel's run of inconclusive votes. Herzog was first elected to parliament in 2003 but was most recently leading the , an organization focused on relations with Jewish immigrants and the Diaspora. 2 Jerusalem Post Israel Invites Moroccan FM to First Israel Visit Israel invited Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita for a first-ever visit, while a high-level US Congressional delegation was in Jerusalem. Foreign Ministry Director-General Alon Ushpiz personally delivered the invitation when he met with Bourita during his trip to Morocco to advance bilateral ties. The invitation was issued by Foreign Minister . Should Bourita accept, it would mark the first arrival of a Moroccan foreign minister in Israel. Jerusalem and Rabat had low level diplomatic ties from 1994 to 2000. They renewed them last year at a more advanced level under the rubric of the Abraham Accords brokered by former president Donald Trump’s administration. The two countries are finalizing details for the launch of direct flights and earlier this week a Moroccan Air Force C130 plane landed in Israel for a joint military drill.

Axios Bennett to Review Iran Policy Prior to Biden Meeting Prime Minister wants to clarify his policy on the Iranian question - notably on the country's atomic weapons program - before his first meeting with President Joe Biden, which is expected to take place in late July, Walla News reported. There are several questions up for discussion regarding whether the current situation is better or worse than a US return to the deal, if and how Israel can influence the Biden administration, and what the current situation means in terms of the military option. Bennett called a first meeting related to the Iranian question, which Foreign Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Lapid, Defense Minister , as well as the heads of the security and intelligence services, attended. Several additional meetings are scheduled before the proposed face-to-face with Biden. In the meantime, Lapid will travel to Brussels to attend the monthly meeting of EU foreign ministers. His message will be to underline Israel's desire to strengthen its relations with its European partners, according to the site. Dig Deeper ‘‘Israel Pushing US to Keep Trump Sanctions on Iran, Even if Nuke Deal Resurrected’’ (Times of Israel)

Ynet News Israel Tears Down Bedouin Tents in Palestinian Village Israel demolished the tent dwellings in the Khirbet Humsah village in the West Bank, a Palestinian official said, in an area designated by the Israeli military as a firing zone. Palestinians and rights groups accuse Israel of trying to forcibly clear out the Bedouins to make room for Jewish settlement expansion. Muataz Bsharat, an official in the Palestinian Authority that administers limited self-rule on the West Bank, said it was the seventh time Israeli authorities had destroyed tent dwellings as well as animal shelters, latrines, solar panels and water containers in the village of Khirbet Humsah. COGAT, an Israeli military liaison agency with the Palestinians, said Israel acted in accordance with a Supreme Court ruling in demolishing tents that again had been illegally erected by Palestinians who "invaded the firing range" in 2012. At least 65 people, including 35 children, were displaced, said Christopher Holt of the West Bank Protection Consortium, a group of international aid agencies supported by the European Union that is assisting the residents. Dig Deeper ‘‘Demolition of Home of Deadly Terror Attack Suspect Said Delayed At US Request’’ (Times of Israel)

3 Times of Israel King Abdullah to Be First Mideast Leader to Visit Biden Jordan’s King Abdullah II will travel to the US later this month where he will become the first Middle East leader to visit the Biden White House. An official invitation for the Hashemite monarch, his wife Queen Rania and his son Prince Hussein was announced in a statement from the White House. The visit will take place on July 19. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Abdullah’s visit “will highlight the enduring and strategic partnership between the United States and Jordan, a key security partner and ally of the United States.” Abdullah will also meet with senior administration officials, congressional leadership, as well as members of Washington think tanks, the Royal Hashemite Court said in its own statement on the visit. In April, Jordanian authorities broke up an alleged plot by the half-brother of King Abdullah to try to take a throne he was once in line to inherit. Prince Hamzah has been silenced, and his purported co-conspirators are on trial behind closed doors in a rare moment of turmoil for one of the strongest Western allies in the region. Dig Deeper ‘‘Lawyer: Jordan Court to Rule Monday in Royal Sedition Case’’ (Associated Press)

Associated Press Ahmed Jibril, Head of Palestinian Radical Group, Dies at 83 Ahmed Jibril, leader of a breakaway Palestinian faction that carried out hijackings, bombings and other attacks against Israeli targets in the 1970s and 1980s, has died in Damascus, his group and Syrian state TV reported. He was 83. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command said Jibril had been sick for months and died at a Damascus hospital. It didn’t offer details. Khaled Abdul-Mejid, who runs another Damascus-based Palestinian faction, said Jibril suffered from a heart condition. The son of a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother, Jibril was born in Jaffa in 1938, in what was then British-ruled Palestine. His family later moved to Syria, where he became an officer in the Syrian army and acquired Syrian nationality. Jibril founded the PFLP in the late 1950s but broke away over ideological disputes. In 1968, he founded the pro-Syrian breakaway PFLP-GC, which briefly joined the Palestine Liberation Organization, but left the umbrella group in 1974, amid sharp disagreements with PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Jibril was a vehement opponent of peace talks with Israel. His group became known for some of the more headline-grabbing attacks against Israel, including the hijacking an El Al jetliner in 1968 and machine gunning another at Zurich airport in 1969. In 1970, it planted a time-bomb on a Swissair jet that blew up on a flight from Zurich to , killing all 47 on aboard. Dig Deeper ‘‘Fatah, Hamas Need Unity for the Sake of a Palestinian State’’ (Jerusalem Post)

4 Yedioth Ahronoth – June 8, 2021 An End to Naïveté By Nadav Eyal ● These are sobering times for the government. The coalition was defeated in the plenum on two fairly important votes this past week. No, that isn’t what is going to bring the government down; yes, it does visibly expose the crude stitches holding this government together, especially in terms of the partnership with the United Arab List. Some members of the coalition believe that it will somehow emerge stronger from each successive defeat. They appear to believe that the coalition is embarrassing the opposition with its own defeats. The underlying logic is odd. It seems far more likely that the ’s hunger for battle will only grow stronger, and that the opposition will look for more cracks that it can use to insert wedges that will split the coalition apart. The naïve thought that it was going to be possible to pass the citizenship law with the current coalition shows just how little the government recognized its own limitations. The government would have been better served had it announced in advance that it expected to lose the vote, and was introducing it only as a matter of principle, rather than to precipitate the huge drama surrounding the vote that ended in its humiliation. ● That naïveté is over, and the age of innocence has ended. Bennett and Lapid realize—or they are going to realize soon—that they will have to reach understandings from time to time with the Joint List. They will also be prepared to pay any price to win over defectors from the Likud, now that bill that allows for a smaller faction to splinter off was passed into law. Their naïveté with respect to the Haredim has also ended. Their initial thinking was to leave the Haredim alone until after the state budget was passed, and then to wait for the Haredim to seek them out in hope of reaching a range of understandings. But the Haredim have gone to war against the government, and Prime Minister Bennett and Finance Minister Liberman quickly realized that the Haredim needed to be made to understand just what they stood to lose from doing that. ● The decision to end subsidized daycare for people who aren’t gainfully employed may be justified on its merits, but it was also a shot across the bow that was designed to alarm the Haredi rabbis, over the heads of the political operators and professional politicians who serve Netanyahu personally. The rabbis take little interest in the composition of coalition governments; when policies are enacted that are detrimental to yeshiva students, then they take notice. Now Gafni, Litzman and Deri are going to have to explain themselves. Presumably, that is precisely what Bennett wanted to achieve. The naïveté with respect to the coronavirus is also over. The option of adopting a new approach towards the pandemic has been shelved. Senior Health Ministry officials asked the coronavirus cabinet to approve a series of preventive measures in response to the rising infection rate in Israel and in light of the uncertainties about the Delta variant. The coronavirus cabinet rejected most of the proposed measures. Three experts were invited to address the ministers: Professor Ran Balicer, Professor Eli Waxman and Professor Eran Segal. The recommendations that were made by at least two of them were rejected.

5 ● The above set of facts can be interpreted in at least two ways: either the health officials’ demands were excessive given the vaccination rate in Israel, and the ministers are right; or the government is being complacent in the face of a rising infection rate. Either way, the bottom line is that the coronavirus cabinet charted its own course, without relying on the experts’ input. That is a potentially treacherous course that was chosen based on the underlying premise that the vaccine will prove to be effective against serious illness, and that nothing barring a scenario in which several hundred people are hospitalized in serious condition is important. A decision in that vein does have an underlying logic. According to data in the UK, Canada and Israel, the vaccine is more than 90% effective in preventing serious illness, including among people infected by the Delta variant. ● However—and this is what the experts argued, something that most of the ministers either didn’t understand or gave the impression of failing to understand—if the Delta variant is far more infectious, that means that the 10% [of people who become seriously ill], when translated into absolute numbers, could prove to be a very large number of people. Everyone, all of us, hopes that the current outbreak subsides. We hope that we’ll be able to look back and say, “The vaccine worked and even if regrettably some people became seriously ill, we never reached 10% or 20% of the numbers we had here a year ago.” But to hope is one thing; to prepare for a grim reality is something else entirely. Whereas in the past few months Israel had had five to six people newly qualify as being in serious condition, this past week there were more than 30. Seven people were added to that list. The pace in Israel is high; as opposed to the British variant, vaccinated people who become infected do suffer from symptoms. ● The UK currently has 30,000 people testing positive daily. While it is true that the number of people who are hospitalized in serious condition is far lower than it was in the past— which is wonderful news—it is still rising. Just last week the pace of daily hospitalizations rose by 52%. People who demand that every one of us take responsibility for him/herself and for us to “live with the coronavirus” (an attitude that has yielded only catastrophic results for countries up until now), forgets the fact that health experts have strongly recommended preventing children from contracting the coronavirus. Why? Because we still don’t have enough information about the impact that Long Covid has on children. ● Long Covid has not been fully defined yet medically, and it certainly hasn’t been fully explained. Nevertheless, the British Central Bureau of Statistics found that 13 out of every 100 children under the age of 11 who contracted the coronavirus reported suffering from symptoms after five weeks and more. Sixteen percent of teenagers under the age of 16 reported the same thing. The prevailing assessment in Britain is that 7%-8% of the children will continue to suffer from symptoms three months and longer after initially becoming infected. The UK is opening 15 clinics that are to be dedicated to treating children suffering from Long Covid. Anyone who is making their decisions based on the optimistic British hospitalization data—optimistic so far, at least—also ought to take into account those data as well. The notion that the coronavirus manifests itself in children only as a mere cold was proved wrong long ago.

6 ● What do the coronavirus cabinet ministers have to say about that? That isn’t clear. Even worse, their strategy isn’t clear either. If the strategic decision is to respond only to the number of people who are hospitalized in serious condition, then what is the point of all the epidemiological contact tracing, mandating quarantines and testing sewage samples? And if the strategic decision is to try to suppress the current outbreak, then why not isolate the parents of infected children and/or reinstate the Green Certificate Program? What is Israel’s strategy? Is it to live with the coronavirus or is it working to suppress the outbreak? Because the measures that were decided are neither the one nor the other. ● Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz traded barbs over Shasha-Biton’s attacks on the Health Ministry. That kind of pettiness shows just how inadequately the government has grasped what exactly is at stake: the new schoolyear in September. The Bennett-Lapid government can, like its predecessor, place all its chips on the vaccines, keep everything open and act like Boris Johnson. Hopefully, that will work. But if it is wrong, even slightly wrong, and the new schoolyear is jeopardized because of complacency in July, we will all revisit the coronavirus cabinet meeting in which a large part of the recommendations that were made by healthcare professionals were rejected.

7 Yedioth Ahronoth – June 8, 2021 The Triumph of Populism By Chen Artzi Sror ● Habits, certainly bad habits, are hard to break. For decades, the State of Israel has bankrolled the choice made by a great many members of Haredi communities not to be part of the workforce. The original sin was committed upon the state’s founding, when Ben Gurion established the “Torah is their vocation” mechanism with the goal of creating an elite group of scholars. This very quickly deteriorated into an entire culture of relying on public funds with no ability to develop financial or employment independence. A lot of people contributed to this problem, and countless opportunities to stop the train were missed. The huge increase in the size of the Haredi population made the challenge even more pressing—not just because of the required budget outlay but, first of all, because a habit that gets passed on from one generation to the next becomes deeply ingrained and becomes very hard to break. The new finance minister, Avigdor Liberman, has decided to change the policy. His first step was to announce that the eligibility criteria for state- supervised daycare would change. Only families in which both parents are either gainfully employed or are studying for a profession will be given subsidies from the state. In the model that had been in place up until now, the State of Israel did everything possible to persuade a married yeshiva student with young children either not to work or, alternatively, to work without reporting that to the income tax authorities. In any event, the salaries earned by Haredim were low because of their lack of education, and it therefore did not pay for men with small children to work if they were being given subsidies in any event. That said, doing this one month before the start of the school year, even if needed to be done, was not fair. ● Liberman had already earned himself—and justly so—a reputation as a Haredi-hater. When asked before the elections whether he would join a government with Haredim after Netanyahu was out of office, he replied: “I’ll send them in wheelbarrows to a good garbage dump.” The suspiciousness, the repulsion and the sense that this was an act of revenge are therefore all quite understandable. As such, they further undermine the legitimacy of this (important and necessary) policy by the finance minister. What could have been done instead? Liberman could have decided that the regulation would go into effect in the middle of the next schoolyear, or next September, so as to give the married yeshiva students a real opportunity to seek employment. He could have said the Jewish state views Torah study as a value, and that benefits will be given to people who engage in that activity—but only for a limited time, and only to people who also acquire a profession. Several other models come to mind as well that, even if more complicated, would have fostered trust. As long as the Finance Ministry’s directives are perceived as acts of religious persecution and are handed down with no explanation and with no helping hand, opposition to them will become almost a religious commandment, the kind for which one must sacrifice one’s life. This will not result in more married yeshiva students seeking employment; rather, it will create more poor families. The stipend and subsidy mechanism is bad, and it primarily hurts the Haredim themselves. But in order to achieve the desired goal, it is important to act judiciously, not just do what is right. 8