APN's daily news review from Israel

Wednesday October 28, 2015

 

Quote of the day:

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Front Page:

Haaretz

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News Summary:
Brother of Rabin’s assassin allegedly incited against Israel’s President and was arrested, electricity still out in parts of the country and towns go on strike to protest lack of tax benefits making top stories in today’s Hebrew newspapers. Meanwhile, the papers barely mentioned the discussions to renew negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.
 
Hagai Amir was not the only one who made controversial statements surrounding the murder of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Tal Benesh Gealel, spokeswoman for Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked posted on Facebook “only 364 more days till the next Rabin festival. I can’t wait.” Peace Now Secretary General Yariv Oppenheimer photographed the post before it was removed and wrote: “I wonder what would happen to any Arab civil servant that would express himself in such a way on memorial days. Shaked would long ago have demanded he be fired.” Shaked wrote in response: “The post was not written with my knowledge, but it was made clear to me that there was no intention to harm the memory of Yitzhak Rabin.” See Quick Hits for more examples.

Communities in the Western Galilee are on strike today to protest their removal from the list that receives tax benefits, while settlements around Hebron were added. Zionist Camp MK Shmuli Itzik told Maariv that the government was “harming the periphery because of the limitless greediness of the settler lobby, Likud and Habayit Hayehudi are giving a death blow to the real periphery fo the State of Israel and harming the residents of the Galilee, Negev and communities around the Gaza Strip. It’s shameful.” Zionist Camp MK Eitan Cabel wrote on Facebook: “Residents of Acre and Nahariya are worth less than residents of Kiryat Arba and residents of Ofakim and Dimona are worth less than the residents of Mt. Hebron. We won’t accept the emerging trend by which only residents of the Territories will get benefits. Likud gives money to settlements at the expense of the Galilee and the Negev. Begin would be ashamed of being in the Likud today.”

A number of proposals have come up to end the violence and the occupation. After meeting with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders separately, the European Union's foreign policy chief Frederica Mogherini said the two leaders must 'demonstrate with acts' their commitment, and said that the Mideast Quartet has several proposals for steps that will help ease tension. Mogherini agreed with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the reasons for the escalation are frustration, lack of hope and no political horizon. New Zealand wrote a draft UN Security Council resolution that proposes confidence-building steps ahead of a hoped-for resumption of peace talks. The resolution calls on Israel to freeze settlement expansion and for the Palestinians not to take Israel to The Hague. According to an unnamed source from the PLO Central Committee, Israelis and Palestinians will hold secret talks in Cairo and Amman for six months beginning in January. The source told the online Emirati website ‘Al-Khalij’ that Jordan, Egypt and the US will participate in the talks. According to the source, US Secretary of State John Kerry will directly oversee the initial talks to set down clear principles for renewing the negotiations.  (Maariv) Meanwhile, France tried to arrange a summit between Netanyahu and Abbas, but Abbas has not responded to the offer.
 
In a stabbing attack in Gush Etzion by two teenage Palestinians from Hebron, an Israeli soldier was wounded in the face. The two Palestinian youth were shot dead. Police say they averted another attack in Jerusalem when they found two Palestinian children carrying an axe and a Stanley knife in a bag. IDF violence towards protesting Palestinians was not reported on. (See Quick Hits for details.)
 

Quick Hits:

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Features:

Only in our mad reality
Thousands of Palestinians continue to go to work in settlements daily. Yifat Ehrlich, a resident of Ofra settlement, went to construction sites in the Territories and discovered the two sides have something in common: fear. (Yifat Ehrlich, Yedioth’s ’24 Hours’ supplement)
How to bungle an investigation into settler violence
A Palestinian man identifies the Israeli settlers who cut down his olive trees. Police close the case anyway, claiming they have no idea who the perpetrator is — without ever questioning the suspects. (Yossi Gurvitz, 972mag)

Commentary/Analysis:

Peace Begins With Reconciliation (Ala Hlehel, Haaretz+) Today, peace seems more distant than ever. To move toward it, we first have to recognize each other’s narratives, fears, wishes and memories.
The disgrace of Jewish extremism (Yizhar Hess, Yedioth/Ynet) We all know we must fight Islamic fundamentalism, but when it comes to fundamentalism in our own home, which is threatening our life as a Jewish-democratic state and endangering Zionism - we hesitate. 
Netanyahu Marks Rabin Murder With Nightmare Prophecy of Israel's Future (Bradley Burston, Haaretz+)
Now, all these years later, I have to force myself to remember that nothing is forever. Not even Netanyahu. 
Without striving for peace, democracy will unravel (Mordechai Kremnitzer, Haaretz+) Removing peace from Israel’s vision for the future and its strategic goals threatens the very future of the state. 
The tune of true fixation (Dror Eydar, Israel Hayom) There is no partner, but there certainly is a psychological fixation on the part of the Oslo dreamers. 
Wh­o really won the 2015 election? (Bradley Burston, Haaretz+) Greater Israel came back from the dead, to claim all of Israel as its own. Netanyahu was simply along for the ride.
A legacy without a successor (Yoaz Hendel, Yedioth/Ynet) Israel's opposition, and most Likud and Bayit Yehudi members, are unsuccessfully searching for Rabin's courage. Few are the politicians who dare to talk about what they really want to do, in any area.  
A temporary state of permanence (Aeyal Gross, Haaretz+) Although Israel never annexed most of the occupied territories, its actions constitute a de facto annexation that gives the Palestinians the worst of all possible worlds. 
How the school system failed us (Or Kashti, Haaretz+) In a multicultural society so rife with conflicts and separation, a different kind of vision is required for education in Israel.

The investigator who sat in front of Yigal Amir in the interrogation room reveals what happened there
On the night of 4 November 1995, Yoram Ben-Harush was called to the Yarkon Sector Police Headquarters in Tel Aviv. For 20 years he kept in his heart and his mind those three days when he sat face to face with the murderer. Now he is revealed and tells of the hours trying to comprehend Amir’s motives. (Interviewed by Tal Ariel Amir, Maariv)
Three weeks ago, on the day that speech by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was heard, retired police investigator Yoram Ben-Harush was sitting in his house and listened attentively to the harsh words coming from the TV screen. As soon as he heard the statement that the Palestinians no longer consider themselves obligated to the Oslo Accords, his heart missed a beat and soul gasped.
His response was not due to the fact that the peace plan is in a shambles for more than two decades, nor by the harsh criticism of Israeli policies. For the first time, after years of repression, the reflection of Yigal Amir, the assassin of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, passed before his eyes. Ben Harush rolled over in his mind the hours he sat in front of Amir, interrogated him and tried to comprehend his motives.
At that moment he realized that, beyond the horrific murder, the security failures of the security services, the national mourning and the family that lost its most precious - with three gunshots fired at the back of the prime minister, in fact also the memorandum of understanding intended to lead to a solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was eliminated.
"I imagined Yigal Amir sitting in his cell, listening to the speech and smiling with delight," says Ben Harush in his first interview, and the aversion is in heard in his voice. "He succeeded in his mission, literally and figuratively. Twenty years after the murder, it is clear that Yigal Amir killed the Oslo Accords. Since then, especially since we are at the beginning of the third intifada, I think about the history of Israel, the long path we've been through, and I wonder how we would look today if Rabin had not been assassinated. Would he have been able to complete the peace process and achieve true calm here? Maybe he would have changed his mind? And I wonder how the political map would have looked if not for murder. A few scenarios passed through my head, but each of them is a matter of conjecture. We will never know where Israel of 2015 would have rolled, but I have no doubt that it would have looked very different.”


 

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