APN's daily news review from Israel

Tuesday October 23, 2018
 

Quote of the day:

Haaretz

Yedioth Ahronoth

Maariv This Week (Hebrew links only)

Israel Hayom

News Summary:
Jordan says it won’t negotiate over the return of its lands, the Saudis were caught in photos trying to cover up the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashouggi and the State Comptroller found Israel responsible for exacerbating the water crisis making top stories in today’s Hebrew newspapers. Also in  Yedioth was the surprisingly forthright statement by Deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber.

Barely making news was that Israel came to the conclusion that no one launched the rocket that hit the house in Beersheva last week: it was a malfunction. The Israeli Security Cabinet ministers told Ynet that the government decided against launching a military operation against the Gaza Strip following the rocket attack because Israeli intelligence determined, with a very high degree of certainty, that the rockets were fired due to a malfunction caused by a lightning storm.  And while the papers keep reporting that Israel keeps saying that there are contacts for reaching a long-term arrangement with Hamas, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman keeps saying that Israel can’t reach a long-term arrangement and that Israel must hit Hamas hard. He said it again yesterday and twice more this month.

What also barely made news vis-a-vis Gaza was that Gazans held their 13th naval march at Gaza’s northern border. At least ten Palestinians were injured by Israeli ammunition.

Interesting, too, were the reports about Iran allegedly expanding its operations. In a rare public speech, Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen warned of Iran's expansionist aspirations in the region and said that technology that helps to fight threats like Iranian nuclear and missile projects can sometimes uncover foreign intelligence operations. He added that US President Donald Trump's approach to foreign policy is 'very pleasant for us, as the State of Israel.' Israel Hayom reported that Iran is now manufacturing and upgrading missiles in Iraq, according to Israeli intelligence sources. Also the latest on the murdered Saudi journalist below.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said his country neither received an official request from Israeli government to renegotiate parts of peace treaty, which allowed Israel to lease Jordanian territories for the past 25 years, nor would it consider such a request if it were submitted. At most, it would negotiate how the land swould be returned to full Jordanian sovereignty within a year. However, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman insisted the dispute could be resolved trhough dialogue, Israel Hayom reported, noting, however, that “in message to Israel, Jordanian soldiers raised a new flag on the disputed area." The revoking of the annexes of the peace treaty means a loss of land for Israeli farmers, who called it an economic 'death sentence.’ Yedioth led its paper with a story quoting ’senior ministers’ who complained that Jordan wants the land (with the water) back just when Israel was upping the amounts of water it was transferring to Jordan. [NOTE: However, the Hebrew papers did not stress how key the water issue is to the Jordanians in this story and what amounts Israel agreed upon to transfer to Jordan as part of the peace treaty. To this journalist’s knowledge, due to the drought in Israel, the amount being transferred is far below what was agreed upon.  - OH] Yedioth noted that “other Israeli officials said the responsibility for the crisis between the countries in part lies with the Israeli government.”

*Dina Zilber on the Law of Legal Advisers: "We are asked to choose between statehood and loyalty"
At a meeting of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, Deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber slammed the Justice Minister's proposal to appoint legal advisors in the government ministries through a search committee rather than through a tender, as is customary today: “We are being asked to choose between statehood and loyalty, loyalty in the media, loyalty in culture, and now loyalty in the law. This is a law that collapses into itself. The bill is a deterioration of the civil service from a non-political and neutral professional service to a position of trust that is expected to wink at the political echelon at every turn," she said reading from a text. "There is a genuine disagreement between two concepts: (On the one hand,) stateliness that established the State Education Law, a state civil service that passed from sectoral to state institutions, and neutral public servants, who are trained to serve all of them. Opposing this is loyalty in law and not loyalty to law, to its basic principles to which we are committed. The present legal advisors have served all the governments. They did not block governance, but gave fuel to the wheels of governance." (Calcalist)


The latest on Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashougii:

Quick Hits:

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Commentary/Analysis:
Why Speak of the Israeli Occupation Abroad? So That This Disgrace Will End (Hagai El-Ad, Haaretz+) A disgrace is when during protests over the past months, Israeli snipers killed three 11-year-old children in the Gaza Strip. It is a disgrace that a Palestinian cannot know whether they can go abroad, or receive medical care, or work their land
Government's indecision on Gaza (Yonatan Yavin, Yedioth/Ynet) Netanyahu and Lieberman have been threatening to strike Hamas with ‘the hardest blow’ imaginable for the past few weeks. However, ‘the hardest blow’ would be dropping an atomic bomb, and between that and what we have seen from IDF so far, there is still a wide range of military options which have not been exercised.
Jordan's King Nixes Peace Treaty Annexes as Payback Against Trump, Netanyahu (Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz+) Jordan's anger over exclusion from the goings-on of Jerusalem and Temple Mount, as well as Jared Kushner's snub when discussing a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation with Abbas, has finally boiled over.
A move that spells weakness (Prof. Eyal Zisser, Israel Hayom) Wary of the public's wrath, King Abdullah of Jordan is working against his country's interests. Still, his decision should not affect the strategic cooperation that Amman and Jerusalem so highly value.
Jordan’s Warning Message (Haaretz Editorial) King Abdullah sought to show Israel that its policies in the territories and the Gaza Strip would no longer continue without a Jordanian response.
The end to democracy? Not at all - WHo is in favor of financing incitement? (Ben-Dror Yemini, Yedioth) Culture Minister Miri Regev’s Loyalty (in Culture) bill was never supposed to come to this world. Democratic states don’t need laws like that. But the left-wing can only blame itself for the situation that was created. It stretched the rope; hooted the unwritten rules, and they don’t need to be written, in the book of laws. And the result is accordingly... An Israeli artist, one should remember, put on the state a play based on the writings of a terrorist sitting in jail. The criticism was only on the public funding. The great shame is that the left-wing stood behind to support that madness. It stands by again these days with a petition by intellectuals. The herd mentality is going wild. If anyone tries to make a criticism, they immediately scream at him the usual claims: Fascism, McCarthyism, end of Democracy.
Stop poisoning the memory (Yaakov Ahimeir, Israel Hayom) After all the mundane, ugly political bickering surrounding Rabin's remembrance on Sunday, we must ask: Why can't we transcend ourselves on this hallowed day? Can't we do better?
Netanyahu’s Current Politics Reopen 23-year-old Wound of Rabin’s Assassination (Chemi Shalev, Haaretz+) The prime minister’s assaults on democracy and dissent suddenly seem like a return to his bad old days.
Rabin family abandons stateliness (Amnon Lord, Israel Hayom) At the memorial day for assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, his grandchildren sadly appeared to revert to the obsessions of the past.
The right-wing against the Rabin family - How long can you go (Raanan Shaked, Yedioth) THe control over memory and its ceremonies will dictate the historic narrative, that the right-wing wants to rewirte so that it would include the incitement, the lessons, the politics. The Rabin family is doing what any person in its place would do - revolting.
PM's capitulation (on Khan al-Ahmar) undermines sovereignty (Mati Tuchfeld, Israel Hayom) It is hard to assess the impact Prime Minister Netanyahu's decision to suspend the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar will have on Israel's international standing but the long-term damage will likely prove hard to deal with.
After the midterms, could a threatened, volatile Trump flip on Israel? (Shalom Lipner, Haaretz+) Ostensibly, Netanyahu's a key beneficiary of this White House's unorthodox foreign policy approach. But for the sake of tentative gains, he's mortgaged Israel's reputation and security to the GOP and to Trump, America's most unpredictable president.
Relax. Trump Won't Put All the Jews in Camps. Only the Democrats (Bradley Burston, Haaretz+) After all, if you can get people to gradually forget about the thousands of children whom you've stripped of their parents, caged, and now packed off to a camp in a desert area outside El Paso, you can get away with anything.
Israel is ignoring US Jews (Rabbi Mikie Goldstein, Israel Hayom) Conservative and Reform Jews are very Zionist and pro-Israel but Israel has been undermining this support and alienating the younger generations. Fostering these ties should be an Israeli priority.
Israel-China ties are a very good thing (Gilad Cohen, Haaretz+) Israel is looking eastward, but the East is looking at Israel too. It sees a country that’s worth investing in, where one can purchase varied products characterized by outstanding technology.
Traveling the world as a Palestinian on an Israeli passport
(Anwar Mhajne, +972mag) When I traveled to Morocco last year, I was escorted from the airport by security — for my protection, because of my Israeli passport — and greeted with ‘Shabbat Shalom.’ When I told the airport official ‘thank you, but I am not Jewish,’ he responded, ‘it does not matter.’
How India's Modi chose Moscow's S-400 missiles, defied Trump and spurned Israel (Shrenik Rao, Haaretz+) Despite Trump's threat of sanctions, India's Prime Minister Modi has signed a massive arms deal with Russia, signaling that, despite close defense ties with Washington, Delhi won't be bullied. And Putin is laughing all the way to the bank.

 

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