Israel and the Middle East News Update Friday, January 17 Headlines: • Final Hurdle Preventing Immunity Removal Likely Next Week • Polls Show Right-Left Still Deadlocked • Blue and White Appealing to Religious Zionists in Wake of Rupture • Ben Gvir to PM: I’m Not Dropping Out, Don’t Preach to Me • World Leaders to Meet in Jerusalem, Send Message Against anti-Semitism • Putin Said Mulling Pardon for Israeli Jailed in Russia Commentary: • Yedioth Ahronoth: “The Immunity Battle” − By Nachum Barnea • Ha’aretz: “Religious Zionist Politics Has Never Looked So Miserable” − Yossi Verter 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 January 17, 2020 Jerusalem Post Final Hurdle Preventing Immunity Removal Likely Next Week Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein is expected at the beginning of next week to announce a date for the Knesset plenum to convene to pass the final proposal necessary to ensure that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's immunity will be removed. There is a majority for removing Netanyahu's immunity in the Knesset plenum and there will also be in the House Committee that will legislate the rejection of his request for immunity from prosecution in his criminal cases. The House Committee will vote to reject Netanyahu's immunity after some three weeks of deliberations. After the vote to reject immunity, Netanyahu’s indictment will be filed at the Jerusalem District Court but will not begin for several months. Once the indictment is filed, Netanyahu will not be able to request immunity from the next Knesset. Times of Israel Polls Show Right-Left Still Deadlocked Polls published by three Israeli networks Thursday showed right-wing parties backing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and their center-left rivals more or less even, with neither bloc projected to win a majority in the upcoming elections. One of the polls, however, showed the extremist Otzma Yehudit clearing the Knesset threshold and winning four seats. The snap TV polls, which have a patchy accuracy record, were the first since party slates closed Wednesday night amid a flurry of activity that saw the reconstitution of the national religious Yamina alliance and the extreme right-wing Otzma Yehudit slate isolated. All three polls predicted Blue and White edging out Netanyahu’s Likud party, but saw Israel’s political deadlock continuing and Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu remaining the kingmaker. Ma’ariv Blue White Appealing to Religious Zionists in Wake of Rupture Blue and White officials are seeking to capitalize on the sense of rupture and fatigue that has plagued broad swathes of the religious Zionist sector in wake of the latest political events—and to go after the religious Zionists. MK Yoaz Hendel posted yesterday, “we’re the only party that puts the unity of the people of Israel before everything else, connects parts of Israeli society, engages in Jewish outreach, and who are calling volubly to break the monopoly the Haredi hacks have on Judaism, open up the kashrut certification market to competition, adopt the Nissim plan for conversion, encourage religious girls to enlist in the IDF and promote Zionist chief rabbis. Hendel told Ma’ariv, “We in Blue and White recognize the profound rift that has split religious Zionists across the right wing, and we call on them to come to us.” 2 Ma’ariv Ben Gvir to PM: I’m Not Dropping Out, Don’t Preach to Me The last-minute political drama left one small party in the right-wing bloc without a merger—Otzma Yehudit headed by Ben Gvir, who declared that he would run independently. This was after Yamina Chairman Naftali Bennett vetoed any merger with Ben Gvir and Rabbi Rafi Peretz, his erstwhile partner, reneged on his agreement with him and joined with Bennett. Now the Likud fears that Ben Gvir’s party will not cross the electoral threshold and that the votes for it will be lost, which is why Prime Minister Netanyahu’s aides are trying to persuade him to drop out of the race. Ben Gvir said yesterday: “If the prime minister had resigned, a government would have been formed. Let him not preach to me to do what he himself, quite rightly, won’t do.” See also, “Israeli Far-right Party Probably Won't Enter the Knesset, but Its Voters Don't Care” (Ha’aretz) Jerusalem Post Leaders to meet in J’lm to Send a Message Against antisemitism They’ll start arriving on Monday. One after the other, kings, presidents, prime ministers and other leaders of 46 different countries will land at Ben-Gurion Airport’s Terminal 1, which will be closed to commercial flights, and head to their hotels in the capital. This unprecedented number of high-level foreign delegations will be in Jerusalem to mark 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, as part of the Fifth World Holocaust Forum, in an event titled “Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism,” hosted by President Reuven Rivlin and Yad Vashem. It’s “the biggest event since the establishment of the state,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a video message on Thursday. Yad Vashem invited every country that was under Nazi occupation, every country that was an Allied power, plus Germany. President’s Residence director-general Harel Tubi said the value of the event goes beyond the amount of visitors; it’s the message that matters. The theme of the event ties remembering the past, the Holocaust, with a mission for the present and future, fighting antisemitism. Ynet News Putin Said Mulling Pardon for Israeli Jailed in Russia Vladimir Putin is considering a pardon for an Israeli woman jailed in Russia on drug charges, a Russian media outlet reported Thursday, days before the president is due to arrive in Israel for a Holocaust remembrance service attended by dozens of heads of state. According to the report, the Kremlin is still extremely displeased, however. with Israel's extradition of a Russian hacker to the U.S. late last year. "We wanted this process to be be a two-way street," a Russian official told the outlet. Naama Issachar, a 26-year-old American-Israeli from Tel Aviv, was jailed in April for seven and a half years after she was arrested at a Moscow airport with 9 grams of cannabis in her luggage. She was on a stopover in Russia as she made her way back to Israel from India. The report in the Russian media comes hours after Putin spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone. 3 Yedioth Ahronoth – January 17, 2020 The Immunity Battle By Nahum Barnea – • It’s hard to imagine two more different politicians than Miki Zohar and Avi Nissenkorn. Zohar is an extrovert. The presence of cameras opens him up: his face radiates. He showed up at the meetings to discuss Netanyahu’s request for parliamentary immunity with Channel Thirteen News’s microphone taped to his back. Everything that he said and did was meant to be filmed and broadcast. He had come to make an appearance: dramatic entrances and exits, fancy words, aggressive body language, tweets, interviews. Contrast this to Nissenkorn: brief on words, zero charisma, shamefaced smiles, patient, quiet persistence bordering on boredom. Nissenkorn grew up in the Histadrut handling labor unions, there’s nobody whom he can’t handle. • Zohar was Netanyahu’s choice: he is the man whose job it is to keep his immunity in place until Election Day. Afterwards, God is great. Nissenkorn was Gantz’s choice. Each of them reflects, in their own, way the priorities of the men who sent them. And in the middle, torn between conflicting obligations and conflicting interests, is Yuli Edelstein. • There are two major variables in the battle over immunity. One is the change in Evet Liberman’s approach. In the past, Liberman was opposed to forming any Knesset committees in the period between one election and another. Without him, the center-left bloc would not have a majority [to form the House Committee]. He changed his position the moment that Netanyahu decided to request immunity for himself. With Liberman, Blue and White can bend the Knesset to its will. • The second change was in Netanyahu’s behavior. He reached the conclusion that he was allowed to break the rules, that he was not obligated to accept the legal opinion of the legal advisers; that he did not even have to accept the ruling of the Supreme Court. Nissenkorn perhaps is familiar with this kind of thing from labor disputes. In the Israeli political game, they are unprecedented. • Honoring the rules of the game, not the dry letter of the law, is the foundation of Israeli democracy’s existence. Is democracy in danger? Absolutely yes. The battle over immunity is the digging that is taking place underneath the wall. • On Wednesday two weeks ago, Netanyahu submitted his request for parliamentary immunity. Nissenkorn asked to immediately convene the Arrangements Committee, which he chairs, to get the process moving. Edelstein asked to postpone, because he was overseas. On Sunday, when they met, Nissenkorn came armed with the requests of the faction chairs, representing a total of 65 MKs. The requests were separate—the Arabs and Liberman were not willing to sign the same one. In addition, Knesset Legal Adviser Eyal Yinon had issued his legal opinion saying that the House Committee could be formed. Edelstein stalled for time—he wanted a legal opinion that would clarify whether he was obligated to Yinon’s legal opinion. • The Knesset is not just a battlefield—it is also a members’ club.