Israel and the Middle East News Update Monday, July 22 Headlines: • Shaked Takes Helm of Party She Founded with Bennett • Kushner to Travel to Israel for Discussions on Peace Plan • Trump Congratulates Netanyahu for Becoming Longest Serving PM • Saudis, Iraqis Among Rare Arab Media Delegation in Israel • Iran Working to Arm Syria and Hezbollah by Sea Commentary: • Ha’aretz: “On Eve of Existential Election, Israel’s Left on Verge of Implosion” − By Chemi Shalev • Yedioth Ahronoth: “Generational Conversion” − By Hanoch Daum 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 22, 2019 Ha’aretz Shaked Takes Helm of Party She Founded with Bennett Former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked announced on Sunday that she will spearhead Hayamin Hehadash (The New Right) – the party she founded together with Naftali Bennett that failed to pass the electoral threshold in April's election. Calling on parties to the right of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud to join forces, Shaked said they must put their differences aside. "A union is the ideological right wing's insurance certificate," she said. "Together, under my leadership, we'll become a significant and powerful force that will lead the State of Israel with courage and faith." See also, “Shaked Wants to Lead the Right. Netanyahu Will Do Anything to Stop Her” (by Yossi Verter, Ha’aretz) Axios Kushner to Travel to Israel for Discussions on Peace Plan White House senior adviser Jared Kushner will travel to Jerusalem and several other capitals in the Middle East next week to discuss how to move forward with the Trump administration’s peace plan, senior U.S. officials told me. This will be an important trip for the progress of the U.S. peace plan — both the economic and political components. The White House is currently in discussions over the timing for revealing the political part of the U.S. peace plan, which has been thrown off as a result of new elections being called in Israel. One of the main items Kushner is seeking to promote during the upcoming trip is the establishment of a multinational fund that will bankroll and monitor the plan to boost the Palestinian economy through projects in the West Bank and Gaza. (by Barak Ravid) Israel National News Trump Congratulates Netanyahu for Becoming Longest Serving PM US President Donald Trump on Sunday congratulated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for passing David Ben Gurion and becoming the longest serving prime minister in the history of Israel. “Under your leadership, Israel has become a technology powerhouse and a world class economy. Most importantly you have led Israel with a commitment to the values of democracy, freedom, and equal opportunity that both our nations cherish and share!” he tweeted. Netanyahu later thanked Trump, writing, “Thank you, President Trump, for your warm words, outstanding support and incredible friendship. I’m honored to have the opportunity to work with you. Under your leadership, we’ve made the alliance between our two remarkable countries stronger than ever. I know there’s more to come.” Jerusalem Post Saudis, Iraqis Among Rare Arab Media Delegation in Israel A month after Bahrain allowed journalists from six Israeli media outlets into the country for the first time to cover the US-sponsored “Peace to Prosperity” workshop, a group of six Arab journalists – including for the first time from Saudi Arabia and Iraq – arrived on Sunday via the Allenby Bridge for meetings in Israel. The six journalists will tour Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Nazareth, as well as meet with Knesset members, Foreign Ministry officials, and academics. 2 Ha’aretz Iran Working to Arm Syria and Hezbollah by Sea Iran is working to transfer weaponry to Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon by sea, to avoid assaults that have targeted arms shipments, Israeli officials believe. According to their assessments, recent attacks, some of which attributed to Israel, that were designed to prevent Iran from entrenching itself in Syria and transferring equipment to Lebanon have led the Iranians to prefer shipping a portion of the weaponry by sea. According to Israeli defense officials, despite growing tensions at sea between Iran and the United States and Britain in the Strait of Hormuz, Israel has not been directly affected. However, officials have warned of the risk that precision missiles launched by Iran or its proxies in the region could hit Israeli naval and commercial vessels. SEE ALSO, “Hamas meets Iran's supreme leader during warm visit in Tehran” (YNET NEWS) 3 Haaretz – July 16, 2019 On Eve of Existential Election, Israel’s Center-Left Is on the Verge of Implosion Peretz's merger with center-rightist Levi-Abekasis has enraged Labor’s base and could consign it to the dustbin of history, much to Netanyahu’s delight By Chemi Shalev • The final deadline for Israel’s political parties to submit their lists of Knesset candidates for the September 17 election is in ten days. Center-left voters and their leaders depict the election as crucial, vital and even existential. Benjamin Netanyahu’s reelection, they claim, could spell the end of Israel’s liberal democracy, as we’ve known it. • Nonetheless, as the clock nears midnight, the center-left is on the brink of implosion. The intensity of its aversion to continued Netanyahu rule is eclipsed only by the inability of its leaders to stand one another or work together. Barring a last minute Hail Mary or deus ex- machina, election that seemed eminently winnable for Netanyahu’s opponents could turn out to be their final Waterloo. • The mainstay of the camp, Kahol Lavan, is plagued by internal bickering and demoralized, perhaps shortsightedly, by the seeming timidity of its leader, Benny Gantz. Ehud Barak’s decision to join the fray hasn’t yielded the big bang that he and many analysts expected and his party Democratic Israel is now hovering dangerously close to the 3.25 percent threshold needed to gain entry into Israel’s parliament. The four main Arab parties, despite their clear understanding that united they’ll stand but divided they’ll fall and take hopes of ousting Netanyahu with them, are stymied by their own self-serving and competing demands for higher personal placements on a unified list. • All of this was bad enough before Thursday’s shock announcementby newly-elected Labor Party leader Amir Peretz that he had recruited center-right social firebrand Orli Levi-Abekasis to join Labor and was allotting her party Gesher, which fell short of the threshold in the April 9 ballot, three seats in Labor’s top ten. Worse, both Levi-Abekasis and Peretz fumbled and stumbled on the issue that is uppermost in their constituencies’ mind: Would they or wouldn’t they participate in a Netanyahu government, effectively stealing center-left votes and handing them over to Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition. • Peretz may have thought that his union with Levi-Abekasis was a stroke of genius that would reshuffle Israeli politics and shift moderate right-wing voters, especially North Africans in development towns, to a recalibrated Labor focused on social equality and led by two politicians of Moroccan origins. What he failed to take into account was that his last-minute realignment of Labor could alienate the party’s own electoral base, sending many of its members packing to seek alternatives and possibly precipitate the collapse of Labor itself. • Based on my own informal and unscientific poll of center-left voters I happened to encounter over the weekend at a wedding, the anger at Peretz is palpable and the flight from Labor is going strong. All of those who voted Labor in the last elections or were deliberating whether to 4 vote for it in the next said they were reconsidering; most declared their divorce from Labor to be final. • Some of the objections to Peretz’s move, concocted clandestinely in back rooms and without prior consultation with other Labor leaders, stem from Levi-Abekasis’s political history with Avigdor Lieberman and her support for some of the ultra-nationalistic laws passed by the Knesset. Others ascribe the antagonism toward the Peretz-Levi-Abekasis union to the inherent racism of Labor’s predominantly Ashkenazi voters, who could barely stomach being led by one Moroccan, let alone two. If Labor sinks in upcoming polls, this rationale is bound to be adopted by many of Levi-Abekasis and Peretz's supporters, pouring the high-octane fuel of ethnic tensions on a fire that’s already getting out of control. • In a worst-case scenario, and if things stay as they are, all three parties to the left of Kahol Lavan – Labor, Meretz and Barak’s Democratic Israel – could fall short of the 3.25 percent threshold. What was once considered a golden opportunity to reverse the results of the April 9 elections – especially after Lieberman decided to declare independence and abandon his automatic support for Netanyahu and the right – has now been supplanted by dread of a total rout that could decimate the center-left and designate the Labor Party and its illustrious past to the dustbin of history. • Cup-half-full types might point to similar disarray among Likud’s national-religious satellites on the right. Even after Sunday’s announcement that Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett were back together after a trial separation – with Shaked on top this time around - the fate of their Hayamin Hehadash (The New Right) still hangs in the balance, with talks ongoing about a possible merger with Habayit Hayehudi to their right.