APN's daily news review from Israel

Monday July 22, 2019

 

Quote of the day:

Haaretz

Yedioth Ahronoth

Maariv This Week (Hebrew links only)

Israel Hayom

Top News Summary:
Former justice minister Ayelet Shaked takes the reins of her party, the New Right, and charges towards uniting all of the far-right, (and if she succeeds, a poll said it would be the third largest party at elections,) Israel’s national basketball team won the European championships for the second consecutive time and the three Israeli teens who are the key suspects in the gang rape of a British tourist in Cyprus continued to be interrogated and to deny raping, while everyone awaited the results of the DNA tests (Maariv) making top stories in today’s Hebrew newspapers.

Meanwhile, US Administration Middle East envoy Jared Kushner and other senior officials are visiting the region next week to discuss the economic part of their peace plan. Last week the Palestinians slammed the Trump administration's $50 billion investment peace plan. According to a report Friday in the London-based pan-Arabic Asharq Al-Awsat, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan are pressuring the US to hold off on announcing the ‘Deal of the Century.’

And the latest on Iran:

Elections 2019 Quickees:
Israel's Labor Party slams the door on left-wing merger
'Merging with Barak and Meretz will deter certain populations from joining us and being part of the revolution,' Amir Peretz says. (Haaretz)
Supreme Court releases reasoning for barring Kahanist leader from Israeli election
Legal analysis explains ruling that member of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party could not run for the Knesset due to his racist views. (Haaretz+)
Ben-Gurion's grandson: "Grandpa was a visionary, Bibi is not"
Moshi Ben-Eliezer was not particularly impressed by Netanyahu's breaking of Ben-Gurion’s record for longest serving prime minister. "There is no significance to the duration of the term of office, but to what was done in it. My grandfather tried to unite the remnants of a people, now they are trying to disband the people into tribes.” (Ynet Hebrew)
 

Quick Hits:

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Commentary/Analysis:
Israeli society will receive significant support if relations with the Bedouin are strengthened (Ruth Wasserman Lande, Maariv) They can strengthen alliances with our neighbors, maintain borders and support the government, but partnership with the Bedouin requires preservation, nurturing and no less important - respect.
Can the Israel-Palestine Campus War Become a Conversation? (Ben Reiff, Haaretz+) The UK student 'debate' spurred by feuding pro-Palestine and pro-Israel groups is noisy, intimidating and intellectually crude: That's why I founded an alternative way of engaging with Israel-Palestine. It hasn't been plain sailing.
Strength is Israel's only real path to peace (Matanya Harrow, Israel Hayom) The attempt by groups like IfNotNow to erode Israel’s support around the world and cast doubt on its legitimacy only perpetuates the conflict.
Assassinations (of Palestinians) are the national comfort of frightened Jews, who "prove" that "security" works (Ran Edelist, Maariv) The assassinations are not intended to eradicate terror, but rather to maintain a tension of hatred and fear against the Arabs who want to destroy us. In addition, they eliminate the chances of diplomatic moves.
Ilhan Omar's boycott resolution tests a party's moral compass (Jonathan S. Tobin, Israel Hayom) If Democrats want the high ground against Trump, they must condemn radical supporters of the anti-Semitic BDS movement, as opposed to defending them.
*A Ridiculous and Unnecessary Battle Over Omar and Tlaib's Visit (Haaretz Editorial) Israel’s decision to let U.S. Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib visit Israel and the territories in the coming weeks despite their declared support for BDS – which has been expressed in part by their sponsorship of a bill protecting boycott supporters in the United States – is additional proof of the pointlessness of the battle against the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. Despite sophisticated intelligence methods and the huge amount of money the state wastes on the battle against BDS, Israel will never manage to make criticism of the occupation go away.
The Paradox of Religious Zionism (Israel Harel, Haaretz+) The family of religious Zionism is flourishing in terms of its quantity, quality and contribution to the nation and the state. Its members’ activities are prominent in the fields of defense, settlement, academia, education (see this week’s Education Ministry publications about the achievements of religious high schools) and volunteering. However, when it comes to ideology, and politics in particular, it is in crisis. The horizons of the parties that presume to represent this varied public are gradually shrinking, and thinkers and ideologues, as well as broad-minded activists, are avoiding involvement in them.  On the other hand, rabbis who don’t know how to contain this rich ideological and human variety are the leading spokesmen – in limited and often infuriating language – on behalf of this entire community.
In the IDF, not all women are equal (Tamar Trabelsi-Hadad, Yedioth/Ynet) Religious girls wanting to serve in the military do not enjoy the same support and preparation as their male counterparts, nor are they given more than a fraction of their support their non-religious counterparts receive.
Israel and Saudi Arabia: It's complicated (Nadav Shragai, Israel Hayom) The Saudis theoretically support an Israeli initiative to link Saudi Arabia and Israel by rail, bypassing dangerous maritime shipping routes. But experts agree that the Saudis are still far from being able to launch official diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.
Iran and Saudi Arabia's Proxy Wars Have a New Battlefield: Indian-controlled Kashmir (Abhinav Pandya, Haaretz+) Tehran is targeting the hearts and minds of Indian-controlled Kashmir's 1.4 million Shia Muslims. Once limited to India and Pakistan, the Kashmir conflict is now becoming much wider - and more explosive
Iran sanctions not cutting it (Oded Granot, Israel Hayom) The economic sanctions imposed on Iran may be taking their toll, but they are clearly falling short of preventing it from running amok across the Persian Gulf. Western powers must come up with a military strategy.
Palestinian Statistics (Amira Hass, Haaretz+) 75,150 students in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (including Jerusalem) took the Palestinian matriculation exams and 52,108 (69.34 percent) passed. The success rate for the literature track, in which 47,467 students were tested, was 64.1 percent; in the sciences, 19,724 students took the exams and 83.63 percent passed. The results were announced Thursday. In other areas, such as business and entrepreneurship, sharia and vocational tracks, where few students were tested, the pass rate was about 60 percent. The matriculation is one important area where the institutional split between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank has failed, thank God, and identical exams were administered in both places. The celebrations, too, were similar in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. They began at 6 A.M. Thursday, with fireworks that sounded like gunfire, and continued throughout the day. In demonstrations at four sites in the Gaza Strip on Friday 118 Palestinians, who were unarmed and did not pose a threat to the lives of soldiers, were injured by gunfire and other violent means, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Among the wounded were at least 45 children, three journalists and four paramedics: one at each site. In demonstrations east of Jabalya, 20 people were wounded: five from live fire and shrapnel, including two minors; 14 from rubber-coated metal bullets — including Khalid Suhail Ali Abed, a paramedic; and one from a tear gas canister. In the demonstration east of Gaza City, where a number of young men threw stones at soldiers, 10 were wounded by live fire, four by direct hits by tear gas canisters and one by a rubber-coated steel bullet. Eyad Ahmed ‘Essa Zeyadah, 14, was dozens of meters from the border fence when a soldier shot him in the head, inflicting serious injuries, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights reported…In the first quarter of the year the unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip was 46 percent, compared to 16 percent in the West Bank, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reported. The average work week was 37.2 hours in the Gaza Strip, compared to 43.6 hours in the West Bank. In the Gaza Strip, 20 percent of women work outside the home, compared to 18 percent in the West Bank. Three-fourths — 76 percent — of employees in the private sector in Gaza earn less than minimum wage (1,450 shekels a month, or $410), compared to just 12 percent in the West Bank. In the first quarter, 103,000 Palestinians worked in Israel proper. An additional 24,000 worked in settlements. The average wage of Palestinians working in Israel and in the settlements was 247 shekels per day. In eight incidents of violence carried out by Jewish settlers between July 2 and July 15, two Palestinians were injured — one in Hebron and one in Hizmeh — and some 200 olive trees were damaged in Susya and in Turmus Aya, according to OCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Settlers let their sheep and goats graze in fields belonging to the Palestinian villages of Yanun and Deir Jarir and planted with wheat and barley. Settlers also entered the villages of Deir Qaddis and Awarta, puncturing the tires of residents’ vehicles and spraying slogans in Hebrew.

Elections 2019 Commentary/Analysis:
No one can know what Netanyahu believes in, if he even believes in anything (Prof. Arieh Eldad, Maariv) Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has made many promises about the development of settlements, promising a great deal and doing very little. Of all the previous prime ministers - from right and left - he is the smallest builder.
The Left Is Good for Netanyahu (Iris Leal, Haaretz+) For example, Labor Party chairman MK Amir Peretz’s recent megalomaniacal step. Orli Levi-Abekasis could have been a nice social-affairs-minded addition to the Labor Party, if we ignore the party from which she sprung and the laws she supported. But now, at the critical moment when unifying the left is a matter of survival, Peretz winks to the right and doesn’t firmly rule out entering a Netanyahu government. That’s not a mistake, that’s sabotage.
The Right must unite (Mati Tuchfeld, Israel Hayom) New Right co-founder Naftali Bennett’s decision to place the good of his party and the right-wing bloc ahead of his own ego cannot be understated. The leaders of the smaller right-wing parties should follow suit.
Shaked Wants to Lead the Right. Netanyahu Will Do Anything to Stop Her (Yossi Verter, Haaretz+) The former justice minister has outgrown her former party, and Netanyahu's main obsession is keeping himself from having to face her in coalition negotiations.
Yair Netanyahu or Ehud Barak: Are there any real intellectuals today in Israel? (Meir Uziel, Maariv) What is the weight of intellectual thought in these crazy elections, in which the main question is about Yair in strip clubs or Ehud Barak and an airplane called ‘Lolita Express’ (belonging to sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein)?
The next phase for the Right: A technical bloc (Dr. Haim Shine, Israel Hayom) If a left-wing government is established after the election under the auspices of Yisrael Beytenu's Avigdor Lieberman, the right-wing parties will have only themselves to blame.
Less women in Knesset is bad for Israel (Chen Artzi Sror, Yedioth/Ynet) Shelly Yachimovich is the latest in a long list of female lawmakers who are either retiring or failed to win reelection for the next parliament; this is a sad time for representation, equality and Israeli politics as a whole.
 

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