APN's daily news review from Israel

Tuesday August 29, 2017

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Breaking News:
North Korea Launches Ballistic Missile Over Japan (Haaretz and Ynet)

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Front Page:

Haaretz

Yedioth Ahronoth

Maariv This Week (Hebrew links only)

Israel Hayom

News Summary:
Three statements by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made headlines in today’s Hebrew newspapers. Netanyahu said he planned to push legislation to bypass the High Court after the latter ruled that Israel cannot jail African asylum seekers for more than two months, and can only deport them with their consent.

*Earlier in the day at a settler celebration inside the West Bank marking the 50-year anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Netanyahu declared that no Jewish settlements would ever be removed again. And in a meeting with visiting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, he said 'Israel cannot accept...the UN should not accept' Tehran's military ambitions in Syria and Lebanon. Also in the news was the issue of the Israeli captives in the Gaza Strip.  

High Court Chief Justice Miriam Naor wrote in the ruling that, in principle, Israel can deport African asylum seekers to third countries even without their consent. But because the state promised in secret agreements with third countries to send only people who go willingly, it must keep its promise. “During this time, it’s permissible to try to persuade him through means that don’t infringe on his free will, or to try to find other ways to deport him against his will,” she wrote. And if a country was willing to accept involuntary deportees, it would be free to implement this agreement, Naor added. And in that case, someone who refused to leave could be jailed indefinitely. Even though the court essentially upheld the agreement that the state itself made with other countries regarding deportation, ministers were angry that they couldn’t jail asylum seekers/infiltrators indefinitely. Public Security Gilad Erdan accused the High Court of “giving an incentive to infiltrators” to stay in Israel. (Maariv) Netanyahu, along with other Likud and Habayit Hayehudi ministers, planned to bypass the ruling through legislation and residents of south Tel Aviv, where most of the asylum seekers live, gathered in protest Monday evening.

For the third time this year, Netanyahu spoke from inside the West Bank and he promised settlers, "We are here to stay, forever.” While Netanyahu claimed that settlements were not an obstacle to peace, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the two agreed that the 'occupation impairs the possibility of a two-state solution.

Earlier in the day, Netanyahu met with UN chief Guterres and told him that Iran was building missile production sites in Syria and Lebanon. Later, Guterres met with Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who said that Hezbollah was storing arms in civilian's homes for use against Israel. IDF brass warned him that Hezbollah was growing in strength and that the UN could do more to curb that. (In a speech Monday, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah accused Netanyahu of being sorry that ISIS was losing, claiming that “ISIS was supposed to destroy our region and hand it over completely to US and Israel,” Ynet reported.) Guterres told President Reuven Rivlin that he intended to be more even-handed with Israel and he equated calls for Israel’s destruction with anti-Semitism.

Israeli officials and parents urged Guterres to get involved in bringing about the return of Israelis - dead and alive - being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The families of Oron Shaul —a fallen IDF soldier presumed dead - and Abera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed - two Israeli civilians - all of whom are currently held captive by Hamas—met with Guterres and asked for his personal involvement in the return of their sons. New Hamas poliburo chief, Yahya Sinwar, said negotiations could start once Israel released the 54 Palestinians Israel jailed again after releasing them in the Shalit deal. "We are ready to negotiate immediately through a mediator to discuss a prisoner exchange deal if Israel releases the prisoners of the Shalit deal that it has imprisoned again," Sinwar said in a meeting with journalists in the Gaza Strip. Maariv reported that Sinwar also said that "The Israeli government is cowardly and deceiving the families of the kidnapped soldiers,” adding that “Hamas has strong cards that leave us on a stable ground so we can present our people with a respectable deal.” Sinwar noted that Arab and international mediators approached Hamas to begin the issue of the exchange of prisoners." But according to Maariv’s Yossi Melman, that an exchange was unlikely to happen. According to Melman, Lior Lotan, the Coordinator of the Missing in the Prime Minister's Office who resigned last week after three years on the job, quit when he realized that his efforts to promote a prisoner exchange deal were in vain because the Israeli government held an aggressive stance not to accept any preconditions which Hamas demanded, i.e. the release of the re-jailed Shalit prisoners. At the same time, the Israeli government was not interested in putting pressure on Hamas so as not to harm the stability of its rule in Gaza, Yedioth’s Ronen Bergman reported. Lotan also was recorded saying that Israel should abduct 200 of the enemy for every Israeli captured.
 

Quick Hits:

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Features:

Beyond Protest Art: A New Wave of Graffiti Is Coloring the Arab World
Walls in Beirut and Djerba are again covered in paint, but this time it's vibrant street art - not political slogans. (Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz)
 
Commentary/Analysis:
Netanyahu's Dangerous Failure (Ephraim Sneh, Haaretz+) Demonstrations of friendship with Putin and Trump did not help when they forged an accord on Syria – and it is a grave strategic blow to Israel.
Trump Is Wasting His Envoys' Time (Haaretz Editorial) Another round of pointless visits to Israel and the PA and empty words that we've heard endless times before will not resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The more things change, the more they stay the same (Yoaz Hendel, Yedioth/Ynet) Don't let the warmer attitude of US Pres. Trump fool you: the US is no more sensitive to Israel's security needs under him than it was under Obama. And just like before, the only way to deal with countries on the brink of nuclear armament is to strike them before they get there.
The Inconvenient Truth About Jews From Arab Lands (Adi Schwartz, Haaretz+) Fifty years ago, Nathan Weinstock was an anti-Zionist Jewish radical. Today, he is the author of a study about Jews of Arab lands, who were displaced just like Palestine's Arabs.
Our heart is with the Goldins, but they're wrong (Ben-Dror Yemini, Yedioth/Ynet) As much as the Goldin family is hurting, they are wrong—putting pressure on Hamas will only make it more popular in Gaza and the international community, and as much as it pains to say it, it is not right to endanger the lives of more Israelis for the return of dead bodies and people who entered Gaza of their own volition. The Shalit deal's mistakes must not be repeated.
Rebuild the families' trust (Yoav Limor, Israel Hayom) Israel does not have to do everything that bereaved parents demand, but those we will send into battle must believe that the state will spare no effort to bring them home.
"Without authority": (Liaison for missing Israelis in Gaza Strip) Lotan resigned when he realized that his efforts to promote a prisoner exchange deal were in vain (Yossi Melman, Maariv) The Coordinator of the Absentees in the Prime Minister's Office decided to resign after three years, because he realized that the Israeli government that appointed him held an aggressive stance and was not prepared to accept any preconditions which Hamas demanded.
With the Occupation in Never Never Land (Amira Hass, Haaretz+) The jeep bounced along the road until our backsides hurt, Tzur texted his girlfriend, complaining that he and the other Israeli troops had fired only stun grenades.
Bring Back the Shame Bonus (Odeh Bisharat, Haaretz+) Maybe it's time to give 'shame pay' to the Israeli judge who billed dirt-poor Bedouin for the cost of demolishing their homes, and the ministers who serve in Netanyahu's government.
The High Court of Justice did not prevent the state from forcibly expelling infiltrators (Attorney Yehiel Gutman, Maariv) In the court's decision to accept the government's position that it has the authority to deport migrants to a third country, there is nothing new. Therefore, it is not clear what the ministers who attacked the court in the media were alarmed about. It was the state that agreed not to do so in its agreements with the third countries.
The New Political Zionism (Dmitry Shumsky, Haaretz+) NGOs' struggle against the occupation continues Zionism's path because it seeks legitimate borders for Israel and the political normalization of the Jewish people — à la Theodor Herzl 120 years ago.
Self-proclaimed super-journalists (Dror Eydar, Israel Hayom) That Yedioth Ahronoth suddenly embraced Raviv Drucker says a lot about how the Left operates, and how it props up its heroes.
Memo From California to Trump and His Nazis: We Will Replace You (Bradley Burston, Haaretz+) To the horror of the Jewish community in the East Bay, there's been a wave of anti-Semitic incidents here lately, and everyone here knows why.
Rethinking our definition of apartheid: not just a political regime (Part II) (Haidar Eid and Andy Clarno, Al-Shabaka, Maan) Seeing apartheid as a system of racial capitalism also allows an understanding that Israeli settler colonialism now operates through neoliberal racial capitalism, whose policies have made life even more difficult for working class Palestinians. Nevertheless, they have contributed to the growth of a small Palestinian elite in the OPT composed of the PA leadership, Palestinian capitalists, and NGO officials. Joining the forces of repression is one of the only job opportunities available to the majority of Palestinians, especially young men: with the PA security forces. The only sector of the Israeli economy that has retained a relatively steady demand for Palestinian workers is construction. This means that two of the only jobs available for Palestinians from the West Bank today are building Israeli settlements on confiscated Palestinian land or working with the PA security forces to help Israel suppress Palestinian resistance to apartheid.
The Results of the Iran Nuclear Deal (Moshe Arens, Haaretz+) The dangers to Israel implied by the agreement were simply ignored by Obama and the other signatories, and now Israel is left to its own devices.
The Real Ark of the Covenant May Have Housed Pagan Gods (Ariel David, Haaretz+) The holy ark was likely kept in Jerusalem for much less time than the Bible tells us. And it may have contained something other than the Ten Commandments.
 

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