APN's daily news review from Israel

Thursday May 23, 2019
 

Quote of the day:

Haaretz

Yedioth Ahronoth

Maariv This Week (Hebrew links only)

Israel Hayom

News Summary:
Significant progress toward a coalition government with MK Avigdor Lieberman likely returning to the job that he quit, while the Attorney General agreed to postpone the pre-indictment hearing again for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and people in the judicial system fear this will give Netanyahu time to wiggle out of being put on trial, as the protests expand against his assumed plans to pass laws to limit High Court powers and receive immunity from the law - making top stories in today’s Hebrew newspapers, along with the mass celebrations for the Lag B’Omer holiday. 

Time is what Netanyahu needs and is getting - although not as much as he’d like - to form a coalition government and pass the laws that will prevent the state from putting him on trial for corruption. With five days to go before the extended deadline to form a governing coalition, the papers say Netanyahu has made progress with the ultra-Orthodox parties and with Yisrael Beiteinu leader, Avigdor Lieberman, who will - ironically - get his old job back. Lieberman quit as Defense Minister in November because he advocated pounding Gaza to stop violence, instead of a truce that eases the siege and improves the humanitarian situation. Unable to function with a narrow  61-59 seat government, Netanyahu decided to go to early elections.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit agreed to postpone Netanyahu’s pre-indictment hearing by another three months to October 2nd. It was not the 12 months that Netanyahu's lawyers had asked for, but Yedioth’s judiciary correspondent, Tova Tzimuki, wrote that people in the judicial establishment fear that will be enough time for him to pass the High Court Override clause and then get the Knesset to give him immunity, something he can easily achieve because he will have a majority in the Knesset committees. Afterward, no appeals will be able to be made to the High Court against his immunity because of the Override clause, which will bar judges from overturning administrative decisions. Channel 12 news reported Wednesday night that the coalition agreements include provisions for a particularly wide-ranging version of the High Court Override clause including the ability to re-legislate laws the High Court strikes down and to bar judges from overturning administrative decisions. Maariv reported that Netanyahu’s top lawyer has just quit the defense team.

The criticism of Netanyahu’s anti-democratic legislative plans continued. The Israeli academia joined the protest against the immunity and override laws, with some 130 law professors and lecturers announcing the establishment of a coalition for the rule of law, Maariv reported. The organization "Adam Teva V'Din" sent a letter to all members of the Knesset calling for preserving the status of the High Court. And, former attorney-general and former High Court deputy chief Justice, Elyakim Rubinstein, attacked the Likud MK, a Netanyahu loyalist, who submitted the bill to amend the immunity law: "Miki Zohar is throwing sand in the eyes of the public without blinking.” Rubinstein also criticized the Likud party’s  candidate for state comptroller, a man who never served as a judge: “There is a desire to harm the idea of a judge serving in the role of state comptroller." (Maariv) The opposition party Kahol-Lavan is holding a massive demonstration in Tel Aviv Saturday night against the legislation. “Defensive Shield for Democracy” is the slogan of the demonstration, which is also drawing additional parties such as Labor and Meretz, the Israel Democracy Institute and additional public social justice organizations. Maariv’s Ben Caspit writes about the seriousness of these efforts to stop Netanyahu, while Haaretz’s Gideon Levy belittles them. (See Commentary/Analysis below.)
 

Quick Hits:

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Features:

Alabama, Iran, or Saudi Arabia? We Checked Where Abortion Laws Are Better for Women
Laws in many Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East are actually more lenient than those currently being pushed in some U.S. states, Haaretz finds. (Noga Malkin, Haaretz+)
In Gaza, Dreams of Marriage Crushed by Crippling Debt and High Unemployment Rates
Many unemployed young Gaza men have turned to wedding lenders, but when they can't pay their debts some are forced to go into hiding, while others end up in prison. (AP, Haaretz)

Commentary/Analysis:
The Delay Battle (Tova Tzimuki and Amichai Attali, Yedioth/Ynet Hebrew) This is not how the prime minister would like to celebrate Rosh Hashana: The attorney general has allowed his lawyers to postpone the hearing uto after the end of the Jewish holiday, but not longer, on the grounds that a prolonged postponement would "harm the public interest." The new date is October 2nd. But the legal system is convinced: Netanyahu is trying to gain time in order to be able to pass the High Court Override clause, (in order) to give up the hearing altogether - and then ask the Knesset to grant him immunity that would prevent him from being brought to justice.
Despite its flaws, we need to fight for Israel’s High Court (Attorney Michael Sfard, +972mag) By propping up a legal system that does not protect the most vulnerable and powerless, the justices of Israel’s High Court have planted the seeds of its own destruction.
Protests spread against Netanyahu’s immunity law (Ben Caspit, version in Maariv/Al-Monitor in English) Controversy has arisen in Israel over a campaign by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's associates for an immunity law and to override the authority of the Supreme Court. In other words, Israel is now speeding headfirst toward a constitutional crisis. According to all the signs, this collision could take the form of a widespread protest movement or even a popular revolt. Such a movement would make the 2011 social justice protests — which involved a million Israelis, the largest demonstration in the history of the state — look like a walk in the park.
Israelis Aren't Storming the Real Bastille (Gideon Levy, Haaretz+) There it goes again, the cry for civil disobedience. To the barricades! Revolution! Immunity laws and laws for overriding Supreme Court rulings rouse the liberal camp from its slumber, and again it’s threatening to go on the attack. Someone suggested a mass resignation of judges; another suggested, heaven forfend, wearing a black armband. What else is in their arsenal? Not leaving a tip at a restaurant? No shopping at the duty-free stores at Ben-Gurion Airport? Former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit, a confirmed democrat specializing in executions, talks about “the execution of democracy.” A former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Gabi Ashkenazi, is making the supreme sacrifice: “For this struggle, I am willing even to go on Twitter.” On Saturday night, a rally will take place under the banner “a Defensive Shield for Democracy.” We can only hope that the choice of name, reminiscent of the IDF’s 2002 operation during the second intifada, was coincidental, because that was one of the most heinous operations in the IDF’s history...Half an hour away by car from the revolutionary law offices of Goldfarb Seligman [where lawyers held a protest conference against the planned controversial legislation - OH], 500 people have been incarcerated for years without trial. There can’t be a democracy where people are locked up without trial. On this matter the protesting lawyers from the esteemed law firm have never piped up. The Supreme Court, for whose independence these attorneys are fighting, approves these detentions, just as it has approved nearly all the occupation’s crimes. An hour away from the museum square where masses will convene Saturday night there’s a horrific cage [Gaza Strip - OH] where 2.5 million people have been imprisoned for 13 years. Children die of cancer there due to a lack of medicine, adults there are like the living dead…
Why the Israeli Left is still in power (Kenneth Levin, Israel Hayom) The Right may form the next government but the Left still controls the unelected government.
Israel at Risk of Credit Rating Drop if It Reins in the Courts (Efrat Neuman and Avi Waksman, Haaretz+)  S&P warned last year it would look askance at such a move. Investors may act more quickly than the rating agencies.
In recent calls for civil disobedience, the left's hypocrisy is exposed (Prof. Arieh Eldad, Maariv) You can be in favor of or against civil disobedience, and even be in favor of the right of an elected government to make decisions - and also to set limits on them. Just don’t be hypocrites, okay?
A Watchdog Ready-made for Netanyahu (Haaretz Editorial) The coalition’s choice of Englman, the director general of the Council for Higher Education, is another step in a deliberate process of undermining the comptroller’s standing as part of the broader assault on Israel’s system of checks and balances that the right, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, is spearheading. MK Bezalel Smotrich of the Union of Right-Wing Parties — one of the two leading candidates for justice minister and with whom Netanyahu coordinated Englman’s nomination — promoted a bill in the last Knesset that sought to quash the comptroller’s power.
Trump has been kind to Israel, but it might end in disaster (Lior Weintraub, Ynet) While Israelis still enjoy kickbacks of friendly U.S. administration, the wheel might soon be turning as Palestinians are seen more and more as the ultimate victim, making some political figures in America refrain from publicly supporting the Jewish state.
Palestinians Won't Ever Warm to Trump's 'Deal of the Century,' Israeli Army Tells Government (Amos Harel, Haaretz+) Security sources believe the Palestinian Authority will collapse economically within three months, but Abbas is unlikely to accept tax funds from Israel.
The US’s Middle East strategy might be fraying (Jonathan Ariel, Israel Hayom) Egypt’s withdrawal from the formation of an “Arab NATO” against Iran is a warning that both Israel and the US need to urgently rethink their strategy regarding the Middle East.
Trump May Expect Riyadh to Invest in Peace Deal, but Saudi Dollars Come at a High Price (Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz+) Trump hopes to raise $68 billion for his 'deal of the century' in Bahrain conference, but it's unclear who's going to be pulling out the checkbook.
Throw the Palestinian Beggars a Bone (Jack Khoury, Haaretz+) in the past, the Palestinian leadership conducted their direct and indirect negotiations with Israel, the United States and the European Union on a single principle: A two-state solution along the 1967 lines, and even set clear, strategic policy demands. Today, too, such statements can be heard in almost every response from the office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other senior PA officials, while Hamas speaks high and mighty about liberation of Palestinian lands from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. But in practice, the two leaderships have accepted the fact that the only thing left to do is bargain over money in return for quiet. After all, the goal of those paying is not to strengthen the Palestinian national institutions or to allow it to build new ones. At most, they want to keep the PA from disintegrating – something that would damage the security coordination with Israel – and prevent a violent outbreak in Gaza by handing out money in the form of $100 bills.
US embassy move has produced lasting gains (Evelyn Gordon, Israel Hayom) Other countries have gone from a situation in which recognizing Jerusalem was unthinkable to one in which it’s being actively debated.
We made sure Israel couldn't hide the occupation from Eurovision (Tanya Rubinstein, +972mag) Israel had hoped to use the Eurovision Song Contest to bolster its international image. We were there to remind the world that there is no business as usual with an occupying state.
Israeli capitulation on the Temple Mount (Tom Nisani, Ynet) We are told that Jews cannot visit this holy site during the final days of Ramadan due to the large number of Muslim worshipers and the danger of violence; but can you imagine France closing the Eiffel Tower to French Christians or Britain banning Church of England followers from the Tower of London
The imperative of deterrence (Clifford D. May, Israel Hayom) We invite aggression if our enemies believe “America cannot do a damn thing.”
 

Prepared for APN by Orly Halpern, independent freelance journalist based in Jerusalem.