Israel and the Middle East News Update Monday, September 12 Headlines: New Poll: Yesh Atid 27, Likud 22 Bibi's 'Ethnic Cleansing' Video Pushes Obama Closer to UN Security Council US-Israel Defense Aid Deal to Be Signed Within Coming Days Israeli Ministers Meet with Facebook to Remove and Bar Inciting Content Thousands of Housing Units to Be Built for Arab Sector Druze Call on Lieberman: Save Our Brethren in Syria Syrian Cease-Fire Negotiated by US, Russia Set to Go into Effect Work Starts on Two New Iranian Nuclear Reactors Commentary: Ha’aretz: “Bibi’s Ethnic Cleansing Claim Sets Guinness Record for Chutzpah” By Chemi Shalev, Israeli Journalist, U.S. Editor, and Correspondent, Ha’aretz Ma’ariv: “Permanent Postponement” By Alon Ben-David, Military Affairs Commentator, Channel 10 Israel S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace 633 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 20004 www.centerpeace.org ● Yoni Komorov, Editor ● David Abreu, Associate Editor News Excerpts September 12, 2016 Ma’ariv New Poll: Yesh Atid 27, Likud 22 The upward trend in Yair Lapid’s poll numbers has continued. According to a poll that was commissioned by Channel One from the Geocartographia Polling Institute, which is run by Professor Avi Degani, if elections were held today Yesh Atid under Yair Lapid’s leadership would be the largest party in Israel with 27 seats, followed by the Likud with just 22 seats. The poll was broadcast on Friday evening. A poll that was published last week by Channel Two News showed Yesh Atid overtaking the Likud for the first time, winning 24 seats over the Likud’s 22. See also, “Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid Pulls Further Ahead of Netanyahu's Likud in Latest Poll” (Ha'aretz) Ha’aretz Bibi's 'Ethnic Cleansing' Video Pushes Obama Closer to UNSC On Friday, when senior White House and U.S. State Department officials saw the video Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted on YouTube and his Facebook page, they were livid. One of Netanyahu’s main arguments was that countries who oppose Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and call for settlement evacuation as part of a peace agreement are, in effect, supporting what he termed the “ethnic cleansing” of Jews. Senior administration officials said they viewed the remarks as directly targeting them. There is no other way to interpret the comments, they said. See also, “US Rebukes Netanyahu Over West Bank ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ Remark” (Financial Times) See also, “Abbas Says Israel Carrying Out ‘Ethnic Cleansing’” (Jerusalem Post) Ha’aretz US-Israel Defense Aid Deal to Be Signed within Coming Days A defense agreement between Israel and the US is expected to be signed in the coming days, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said Sunday. Speaking to a conference at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Shapiro said the agreement would provide for Israel’s defense needs until 2029 and constitutes the largest aid grant the US has ever given a foreign country. Shapiro’s remarks were the first public comments on the aid package by any official Israeli or U.S. source in several weeks. In early August it looked like the details had been finalized, but after weeks, it has yet to be signed. Yedioth Ahronoth Israeli Ministers Meet w/ Facebook to Remove Inciting Content Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan have demanded of Facebook executives that it remove from its platform words such as “Intifada,” “stabbing,” “Nazis,” and “shahid,” arguing that those words foment terrorism. The two ministers are scheduled to meet today with Facebook executives in Tel Aviv with the goal of reaching understandings about the removal of inciting content. In recent months, and particularly ever since the “lone wolf Intifada” erupted, talks have been held between representatives of the Israeli law enforcement agencies and Facebook representatives in hope of monitoring inciting content. In many instances Facebook agreed to remove the content in question, though there were other cases in which it did not. 2 Ynet News Thousands of Housing Units to Be Built for Arab Sector Minister of Construction Yoav Galant (Kulanu) traveled to Baka al-Gharbiya, where he signed an agreement to build thousands of units for the Arab sector. The agreement includes 15 heads of local municipal Arab authorities. Galant was accompanied to Baka al-Gharbiya by Minister for Social Equality Gila Gamliel (Likud), Deputy Minister Jackie Levy (Likud) and Construction Ministry Director General Eshel Armoni. According to the agreement, the Ministry of Construction will allocate 1.41 billion shekels to erect public housing for Israeli Arabs, in addition to it lifting restrictions from building on private land. Yedioth Ahronoth Druze Call on Lieberman: Save Our Brethren in Syria The Druze community in Israel is anxious about the advances that Jabhat al-Nusra has made towards the Druze villages on the Syrian side of the Golan border. Yesterday MK Akram Hasson (Kulanu) posted a call on Facebook to Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to come to the defense of the Syrian Druze beyond the Golan border. “In another moment Jabhat al-Nusra is going to massacre our brethren in Syria, and we have no intention of sitting by quietly. Lieberman must wake up.” Hasson claimed that Jabhat al-Nusra militiamen had steered clear of the Druze villages up until several months ago because they were afraid of the IDF’s response. Hasson’s Facebook post received thousands of likes and was broadly shared. See also, “Israeli MK: IDF Helping Al-Qaida in Syria at Expense of Druze” (Jerusalem Post) NPR Syrian Cease-Fire Negotiated by US, Russia Set to Go Into Effect A Syrian cease-fire is due to go into effect at sundown on Monday, at approximately 11:45 a.m. EDT. Just hours before the start of the planned cease-fire, Syrian President Bashar Assad announced on state media that he plans to "reclaim every area from the terrorists." Assad's government had earlier indicated it would abide by the negotiated truce. The planned week-long cease-fire is part of a deal negotiated between the U.S., which supports opposition forces, and Russia, which supports Assad's government. After the cease-fire, if aid successfully reaches besieged areas, Russia and the U.S. intend to work together to coordinate air strikes on extremist groups, including the Islamic State. See also, “Russia and the United States Reach New Agreement on Syria Conflict” (New York Times) Hurriyet Daily News Work Starts on Two New Iranian Nuclear Reactors Russian and Iranian firms began work on Sept. 10 on two additional reactors at Iran’s nuclear power plant on the Gulf coast at Bushehr. Project manager Mahmoud Jafari said construction of the two 1,000 MW reactors, which is being carried out jointly with an Iranian firm, would take a decade and cost up to $10 billion. “When these two units become operational, 11 million barrels of oil will be saved per year and emission of 7 million tons of greenhouse gas will be avoided,” he said. Some 8,000 workers are involved in the project, which is being led by Russia’s Rosatom with Iran’s Nuclear Power Production and Development Company. See also, “Iran Began Construction on 2nd Nuclear Power Plant; West: Not a Proliferation Risk” (Wall Street Journal) See also, “Iran Launches Construction of Second Nuclear Power Plant” (Voice of America) 3 Ha’aretz – September 10, 2016 Bibi's Remarks Set Guinness Record for Chutzpah By Chemi Shalev Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim in a Facebook video on Friday that the Palestinian demand for the evacuation of Jewish settlements from the West Bank constitutes “ethnic cleansing” belongs in the same league as “Arabs are coming to vote in droves” and “the Mufti persuaded Hitler to exterminate the Jews.” It’s the kind of statement you can’t believe he really said until you see he really said it. Then come the aftershocks, when all sorts of people in the know laud the utterance as a brilliant gambit of a grandmaster strategist. He wanted to divert the public agenda from the recent crisis over railroad construction on Shabbat, which tainted him, to rebuffing the expected backlash of leftists over his right wing assertions, at which he excels. He is distracting attention from the ongoing police investigation of potential corruption charges. He wants to humiliate Mahmoud Abbas a bit more, after the Palestinian leader was forced to agree to a Moscow summit without preconditions, and perhaps to scuttle the meeting altogether. He wants to show Yair Lapid, who has been breathing down his neck in the polls after assuming a more right wing position, how a consummate rabble-rouser can muster up the nationalist mob without even breaking a sweat. He wants to stick it to U.S. President Barack Obama while he still can, just for the fun of it - or to show what a ferocious war he'll wage against the prospective UN Security Council resolution on the conflict. But whatever the rationale, it’s hard to decide whether Netanyahu’s statement was more off- putting than off the wall or vice versa. International jurists are at loggerheads whether ethnic cleansing should be considered a form of genocide, but all agree that it is a crime against humanity. Netanyahu apparently thinks that Abbas and the Palestinians are all potential ethnic cleansers, along with the rest of the world, which is egging them on. Not only are U.S. presidents from Jimmy Carter onward inciters, aides and abettors of an abhorrent crime, but, according to Netanyahu’s logic, former Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin, who evacuated settlements in the Sinai, and Ariel Sharon, who removed settlements during the Gaza disengagement, belong in the same rogues gallery as Stalin, Milosevic et al.