APN's daily news review from Israel

Monday September 23, 2019
 

Quotes of the day:

Haaretz

Yedioth Ahronoth

Maariv This Week (Hebrew links only)

Israel Hayom

Elections 2019:
The big news in today’s Hebrew papers was the “historic” recommendation by the Joint List to endorse Kahol-Lavan leader Benny Gantz to form the coalition government.  The top political commentators of Yedioth and Maariv, Nahum Barnea and Ben Caspit, respectively, wrote about it on page one, seeing it as a new hope for the country and an answer to the incitement by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his “Revolutionary Guards” during his rule. (See Commentary/Analysis below.) The recommendation was the first in almost 30 years by the Arab parties in Knesset, happening last when they put their support behind the late Yitzhak Rabin. However, because the three Balad party members of the Joint List did not attend the meeting with the President and said they are not part of the Joint List’s decision, it was thought that the President would not take their three seats into account, giving Gantz 54 recommendations compared to Netanyahu’s 55. he papers reported that Kahol-Lavan did not want to have the first attempt to form a coalition, thinking that it would have a better chance if Netanyahu tried first and failed, after which Likud MKs would demand Netanyahu step down as head of the party. (Also, Maariv and Yedioth Hebrew.)  Sources in the Joint List said that their demands in making the recommendation were to deal with the high crime rates in the Arab sector and repeal the Jewish Nation State law and the law against illegal construction. It was not clear whether they received any commitments or not. After the Joint List recommendation, Netanyahu attacked the Arab parties in a social media video saying: "It happened just as we warned. Now there are two options: either a minority government that relies on those who reject Israel as a Jewish and democratic state or a broad national government." Meanwhile, a poll found that most of the Arab citizens of Israel support the Arab parties joining the government, however, they don’t agree (77%) that Israel has a right to define itself as the nation state of the Jews. The poll also found that the majority of Arab citizens of Israel, 65%, are proud to be Israeli. (Maariv)

Yedioth Hebrew’s legal affairs correspondent, Tova Tzimuki, reported on Netanyahu's legal situation. Sources in the President’s Office turned to the Judiciary over the weekend to see if Netanyahu's current legal status, about a week and a half before the hearing, would allow him to form a government. Despite the legal challenge, Attorney General Avichai Mendelblitt’s associates responded that there was nothing to prevent it - at this point in time. The petition was made against the backdrop of Yedioth Ahronoth's publication last week, which states that if it is decided to indict Netanyahu after a hearing, he may be barred from declaring a third election campaign or forming a government. According to news reports last night, officials from the president's office contacted the Attorney General’s office informally, without requesting an opinion and without the president's involvement. Sources close to Netanyahu have argued that according to the Basic Law: The government states that the term of office of a prime minister will be terminated only after conviction in a final verdict, and therefore the "Deri-Pinchasi” ruling, according to which a minister who was indicted will be dismissed, cannot be applied. This is a complex and debatable legal issue, but if the President entrusts Netanyahu with the task of assembling the new government, then according to the law it will be done under Netanyahu's "hat" as a Knesset member and not as prime minister, so the legal rules are different. In other words, just as no one can be appointed to office when that person has been indicted for crimes that consist of moral integrity, there is reason to argue that the president's discretion in imposing the job of forming a government on Netanyahu - while according to law he is defined as an MK - will be limited following a decision to indict him, particularly for corruption charges. In any case, at this stage, the Office of the President received the response that despite the legal scenarios, there is no legal prohibition on the matter. The prime minister's hearing is set for October 2, and the assessment is that the decision to indict will be made in November.
 

Quick Hits:

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Elections 2019 Commentary/Analysis:
Joint List Reps Cross the Rubicon to Endorse Gantz – Who Blanches in Return (Chemi Shalev, Haaretz+) Arab party’s outrage at Netanyahu’s incitement cost him the election and may end up denying him the premiership. The main catalyst for the Arab leaders’ newfound assertiveness is the same one that facilitated the Joint List’s surge from nine Knesset seats in April to 13 in last Tuesday’s election – and it goes by the name of Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister’s relentless incitement against the Arab minority during the election campaign galvanized Arab voters to go the polls…But it was not only their lust to exact revenge on Netanyahu that pushed the Arab politicians to inject themselves into the main arena of Israeli politics, from which they have largely kept their distance. The deeper – and, in the long run, far more significant – backdrop to the Joint List’s move is the ongoing integration of Arabs in Israeli workplaces and the community’s increasing focus on equality and acceptance rather than the overall Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their overriding concern in recent years isn’t violence in the West Bank but an increasingly lethal crime spree in Arab towns and villages, where murder rates far exceed those in the Jewish sector.
Joint List must translate election feat into action for Arab community (Rasool Saada, Yedioth/Ynet) The political alliance's impressive election success shows Arab citizens want a say in political arena; now representatives must curb issues plaguing the electorate - starting with rampant crime and violence.
Why the Arab Alliance’s Endorsement of Gantz Is a Big Deal (Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz+) It shows just how badly the voters who sent 13 Joint List representatives to the Knesset want to integrate into Israeli society.
*The joint recommendation (Ben Caspit, Maariv) It is a formative step, and it is only natural that Netanyahu's Revolutionary Guards came out against it. The endorsement by the Joint Arab List for a Zionist party to form a government in Israel marks a historic move by the Arab MKs, but it is natural that Netanyahu came out immediately against it. It was clear that half a minute after the Joint List would endorse Kahol-Lavan (to form a coalition government), Binyamin Netanyahu would emerge and broadcast some slander: "Just as we warned you!" the Israeli prime minister lamented in a video distributed among his fans, from the moment it was revealed that Benny Gantz, Bugie Ya'alon and Gabi Ashkenazi were ISIS spies planted in Israel. It will be said immediately: There are some types in the Balad party (one of the four parties making up the Joint List - OH) that I would love not to see in the Knesset. Balad should be disqualified from running because it undermines Israel's existence as a Jewish state. MK Ofer Kasif, a Jew, is a man with abominable positions. But all that is irrelevant. The endorsement by the Joint Arab List of a Zionist party to form a government in Israel is a historic, formative and exciting event. Nothing less. It evokes an old hope that was almost extinct from our region during the days of rage and terror that landed on us here in the last decade. This endorsement marks a historic move by the Arab Knesset members towards their voters: integration, coexistence and influence. This is wonderful news, and it is only natural that the Likud spokesmen and Netanyahu's protagonists immediately came out against them with holy rage and raised neck veins. Take advice…, here is a step towards normalcy!! God forbid. First, the hypocrisy must be ripped off the faces of the bullies: It was Binyamin Netanyahu who made a political alliance with the Arabs a few months ago. He dissolved the Knesset with the Arab votes. He put in the role of state comptroller a strange mutant, with the Arab votes. Why is dissolving the Knesset and sending a state to redundant elections - more kosher than a government recommendation for forming a new government? In 2009, it was Netanyahu who built and relied on a block with the Arabs to prevent (Tzipi) Livni from forming a government after Olmert's resignation - the latter who preferred to defend himself in court without taking an entire state hostage.  This, and more: A few weeks ago,…(Netanyahu confidante), Natan Eshel, went through a quick conversion treatment and became (Netanyahu’s) publicist. Eshel published two articles in which he calls for a historical connection with the Arabs of Israel, calling them "the solution, not the problem" and urging anyone willing to hear that it is time for them to take part in the political process and state affairs. When someone else tries to do it, he betrays. As usual. Anyone who reads these words and lives here knows the truth. There are hundreds of thousands of peaceful, hopeful Arab citizens in Israel who long to play a more central role in the life of the country. They are less interested in the Palestinian issue than ever. They know very well the advantages of the country in which they live. They love to live in it, and they would very much like to feel more at home in it. They crave real treatment of the violence and murder in their cities and villages, they want to integrate in high-tech and feel part of the wonderful event called Israel. The endorsement for Kahol-Lavan is a kind of trial that can herald the arrival of the Jewish-Arab Spring. Maybe it's a pipe dream and maybe nothing will come of it. But to disqualify it outright is just plain nasty…
Now It’s Gantz’s Turn (Haaretz Editorial) The Joint List’s decision to ask President Reuven Rivlin to give Kahol Lavan Chairman Benny Gantz a chance to form the next government is worthy of praise. The fact that representatives of the Arab community in Israel were willing to recommend a former chief of general staff as their candidate for prime minister cannot be taken lightly. Nor can one underestimate the magnanimous political spirit displayed by the Joint List, headed by Ayman Odeh, when it chose to ignore the videos with which Gantz opened his campaign, in which he boasted about killing 1,364 of their people during the Gaza war of 2014, and which showed the destruction of entire neighborhoods in the Strip.
Will a day come when Arab citizens will prove their desire to integrate into society? (Yossi Ahimeir, Maariv) We are told that the relatively high turnout of Israeli Arabs indicates their desire for greater integration in the country. This is partly true, and it would be even more true if they did not elect extremists to represent them in the Knesset. We meet Israeli Arabs in our daily lives, we are blessed with their service, their functioning, the encounter with them, the conversation with them. Will there come a day when they will demonstrate their desire to truly integrate and elect a leadership that does not exploit, for incitement and subversion, the freedom of expression in the democratic state in which they are fortunate to live, even as a minority? Inshallah.
By Backing Gantz, Arab Slate Signals Its Public Seeks to Influence National Agenda (Jack Khoury, Haaretz+) It only remains to be seen whether Gantz and the State of Israel are prepared to view Arab citizens and their representatives as legitimate partners who can help set the national agenda
**The half-full glass (Nahum Barnea, Yedioth Hebrew) King Gordius of Phrygia, the Greek legend says, made a knot that was impossible to unknot. The greatest of experts tried and failed. Until one king, Alexander the Great, came, pulled a knife and cut the rope. This is probably the nature of the entanglement that was created following the election. It won’t be unraveled by bribery to some Knesset members. Nor by all sorts of clever…calculations, complicated patents, incredible speculation, which have no real connection to reality. True, the election created a temporary entanglement, but it also created clarity. It's a glass half full. You can start from the end: It is clear to everyone involved in the negotiation discussions, except perhaps one candidate, that there won’t be a third round. The formation of the coalition may require time, sure it will irritate public opinion and involve crises and landmines, but in the end a government will be formed here. The true power of the president of the state at this juncture derives not only from the powers given to him by the law but from the right reserved to him to tell the public who is guilty of failure. A party that will go to the polls for a third round when it has a ton of butter on its head, presidential butter, will come back smaller, more rejected. The government will be set up by its rival. The second clarification concerns Netanyahu. For all intents and purposes, he is finished. The loyalty shown to him by his Likud subordinates and his partners in the ultra-Orthodox factions is touching, but it cannot last for long. He has no immunity coalition. The only one who can give it to him is Lieberman, and for now Netanyahu has no way to satisfy his demands without losing the ultra-Orthodox. He can try to seduce Amir Peretz, but he will face at least two barriers: MK Merav Michaeli and MK Omar Bar-Lev. Will he be able to lure friends from Kahol-Lavan, from the Joint List? Not now, with both lists celebrating achievement at the ballot box. At most, he will delay the end. He will have a government until the indictments are filed. Another six months, another year in Balfour, with the whole local and international political system operating under the assumption that the end is near. Big deal. The third, and most important, clarification concerns the Arab sector. The upheaval that took place there is truly a historic event. Its significance goes beyond current negotiations and political play. The sector says, quite simply, we decided to integrate, to influence, to demand the part we deserve in the cake. Want it or not, we're here. What matters during this time is that it does not come from above but from below, from the electorate. Only the Balad party [one of the four parties making up the Joint List - OH], which has very few voters, can afford to go against it. Too bad it didn't run independently, like Otzma Yehudit. Of all the parties that came to the President yesterday, representatives of the Joint List were the most practical and restrained. The demands they made were reasonable: war on crime and homicides, stopping demolition of houses, repealing laws that discriminate against their constituents. Netanyahu's response came quickly: The traitor Gantz conspired with the Arabs to destroy us. As always, Netanyahu did not really mean the Arabs. He just wanted to bring Lieberman to his own team. The incitement was a bonus. Miri Regev was also included in the Likud delegation meeting the president. She may have forgotten, but nobody in the president's house forgot the allegation made by Regev during the illness of the President’s late wife, Nechama Rivlin. They were spending too much money on taking care of, Regev complained. So mean, so low. She came to lament that Kahol-Lavan doesn’t want to sit in a Netanyahu-led government. How could they boycott an entire public, she asked with pathos. Around the table they had to prevent themselves from smiling. It will take time for politicians to internalize what the election campaign has made clear. So it probably pays to wait for the second round, maybe even the third [of negotiations - OH]. If there is no accident on the way, in the end everyone will show up for traditional photo at the President's house.
Netanyahu, the Alpha Negotiator, Battles a Political Novice for Power (Steven Klein, Haaretz+) Netanyahu has a decade's success at dirty deals to make coalitions. Does Gantz - the centrist with a once-in-a-decade chance to change Israel's political calculus - have the killer instinct to dethrone him?
Arab voters feel more Israeli than Palestinian (Prof. Eyal Zisser, Israel Hayom) When Arab voters went to the polls last week, they sent a message to the Israeli public: We want to integrate. Now the Zionist parties must step up to the plate.
Gantz Has These Three Paths to Premiership (Raviv Drucker, Haaretz+) Gantz, you have to be more like Netanyahu.
The challenge of Kahol-Lavan (Uri Heitner, Yedioth Hebrew) The Likud with the addition of Kulanu party, received together in the April elections together some 42 seats. Eleven seats were lost in the September elections. But it was natural that most of these votes would go to Kahol-Lavan giving a knock-out victory and a clear mandate to form a government headed by it. Kahol-Lavan, as a centrist party, was intended to house the moderate parties of the right-wing and left-wing. It was supposed to be a stepping stone for the right-wing people, the liberal religious Zionists, the Likudniks who were sick of Netanyahu, the voters of Kulanu who did not want to be swallowed by the Likud. Why didn't it happen? Why did those people prefer to go to the sea and not choose the center? There is no doubt that Netanyahu managed to intimidate the moderate right in the campaign of “Gantz and Lapid are a weak left who will form a government with (Joint List members) Odeh and Tibi." But Kahol-Lavan also has a large part to blame. Instead of identifying itself as a hawk and security center party, it was drawn into the image of part of the "left-center bloc." The rotation with Lapid, the demonstration with Ayman Odeh, the oxymoron of “secular unity,” Gantz's statement that if the supporters of the Democratic Camp want to advance their agenda they should vote for Kahol-Lavan - all of which was an electoral asset to Netanyahu and thwarted the upheaval. This lesson must be learned by Kahol-Lavan, which must henceforth cut off the Gordian knot called "left-center.” It must differentiate itself from the left, by establishing a national unity government with the Likud, and by leading a hawkish-center policy that will restore national agreement among the people. A national unity government headed by it may re-consolidate Israeli society around a balanced political path, which includes annexation of the Greater Jordan Valley and settlement blocs and significant settlement development of these areas, along with expressing readiness for a realistic territorial compromise in the future. It must put an end to containment and restraint policies on the Gaza border and convert it to restoring Israel's deterrence. It must adhere to the Netanyahu government's correct policy on the Iranian nuclear issue and Iran's attempts to establish itself near Israel, but return to the ambiguity policy in these actions.
The Left and the Joint Arab List: Subservience, not a partnership (Dr. Eitan Orkibi, Israel Hayom) The Left sees the Arab voters as tools, not partners, while offering Arab leaders an ideological haven from which to institutionalize Arab opposition to Jewish nationhood.
Netanyahu and Trump relations: US president doesn't like losers (Shlomo Shamir, Maariv) Trump cannot oust Netanyahu. But be clear, he is no longer privileged at the White House, no longer the great friend. Trump suddenly discovered that in the State of Israel lives there lives a people.
You Think Two Israeli Elections in a Year Is Inconvenient? Try Flying 12,000 Miles Each Time to Vote (Danielle Ziri, Haaretz+) Whether they flew over from New York specifically to vote or followed events from afar, these expats all say they have higher hopes for the next Israeli government
Revenge is wrong (David M. Weinberg, Israel Hayom) Ten commandments for forming and running Israel’s next government, which inevitably must be a broad unity coalition.

Commentary/Analysis:
Court-approved License to Incite (Odeh Bisharat, Haaretz+) Five days and counting after the election, the term “electoral fraud” has already disappeared from the Israeli lexicon, together with the sentence “The Arabs stole the election.” From such a short distance the events of the week before the election seem like a shocking episode that happened in the dark days of history. Go explain to future generations that in September 2019 Israel faced a new governmental order: Private right-wing militias, armed with cameras, were about to monitor the election. It’s chilling…I expected that after Melcer discovered that it was all a story and the “theft Arabs did not in fact steal the election, he would make a dramatic announcement that would shake the country to its foundations: Honorable Prime Minister, you are lying. You are putting the lives of some 2 million people in danger and I will not allow you to persist in this terrible act. Really, Justice Melcer, what legitimate realm of free speech can suffer lies and incitement against the Arabs? This is not free speech, it’s freedom to incite, which was permitted, unfortunately, on account of your refusal to prohibit the fake news in real time, while it was happening.
David Flung His Words at Goliath (Amira Hass, Haaretz+) The Gaza-born Dutch citizen, who submitted a civil suit against Benny Gantz and Amir Eshel for the death of six family members in 2014, invoked the biblical story before the court himself. Ziada told the judges that two Dutch jurists had worked hard to persuade him to file the suit: his wife, the diplomat Angélique Eijpe, and her great-uncle, Henk Zanoli. Zanoli was awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem because he, together with his mother, saved a Jewish boy during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In 2014 he returned his medal to Yad Vashem to protest the killing of Ziada’s family. As a result, the family was spared the international oblivion and anonymity that surrounds the hundreds of other Palestinian families that Israel erased when it bombed and shelled their homes in the refugee camps and the cities while they ate dinner and while they slept in their beds at night or gathered in the afternoon in the coolest room. “While my wife and her great-uncle ... [have] faith in legal recourse in the Netherlands, I had a different lived experience concerning the application and the merits of law, Ziada told the court. Meaning: The life of any Palestinian prove to him or her every minute that he and she cannot expect justice from the Israeli legal system. After a full day of deliberations, from 9:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M., the judges announced that their next open hearing on the case will be in January 2020. They will deliver their ruling as to whether the Dutch court has jurisdiction to hear a civil suit over the killing, on January 20, 2014, of Muftia Ziada, 70, born in the village of Faluja and a refugee living in the Bureij refugee camp, her sons Jamil, Omar and Yousif, her grandson Shaban and her daughter-in-law Bayan.

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