Tag: arab israeli crisis
Palestinians Denounce Netanyahu, Vow To Keep Up Statehood Push

Palestinians Denounce Netanyahu, Vow To Keep Up Statehood Push

By Maher Abukhater and Laura King, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinians signaled on Wednesday that if a right-wing new government takes command in Israel, they will enlist the help of the international community in pursuing their statehood bid and pressing war-crimes action against Israel.

With nearly all the ballots counted by Wednesday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party outpolled the center-left Zionist Union by a substantial margin, positioning Netanyahu to assemble a governing coalition.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator in earlier peace talks with Israel, said it appeared Netanyahu would remain in place as prime minister. On the eve of the election, the Israeli leader declared that there would be no Palestinian statehood while he remained in office.

“It has become clear that Netanyahu, who just said that he is against a Palestinian state and that he plans to increase (Jewish) settlements if elected, will form the next government,” Erekat told the Voice of Palestine radio. “It is very clear that there is no partner in Israel for the peace process.”

The last round of peace talks broke down nearly a year ago, and while Netanyahu’s main opponent, Isaac Herzog, had pledged to try to re-engage the Palestinians, Netanyahu has made no such promise. He reiterated plans to press ahead with Jewish building in east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as the capital of their future state.

Erekat said the election outcome “proves the correctness” of the Palestinian decision last year to join the International Criminal Court and sign onto other international treaties and organizations. Israel has denounced those moves as unilateral and punished the Palestinian Authority by withholding millions of dollars in tax revenues.

Erekat and others predicted that Netanyahu’s election-eve repudiation of a 2009 speech in which had had accepted in principle a two-state solution would galvanize international support for the Palestinian cause.

“The entire world is going to be with us,” Erekat said.

Netanyahu said in interviews and campaign appearances on Monday, in advance of Tuesday’s general elections, that his 2009 stance had become irrelevant because “realities on the ground” had changed.
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Special correspondent Maher Abukhater reported from Ramallah, West Bank, and staff writer King from Tel Aviv.

Photo: An Arab citizen of Israel looks at a list of parties running in Israel’s 2015 parliamentary elections on Tuesday, March 17, 2015. Arab citizens of Israel voted in record numbers Tuesday to propel a newly formed unified list of Arab parties to the third-largest party in Knesset, Israel’s parliament. (Daniella Cheslow/McClatchy/TNS)

Netanyahu Denies Backtracking On Speech Backing Palestinian State

Netanyahu Denies Backtracking On Speech Backing Palestinian State

by dpa (TNS)

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied Monday that he no longer stood behind a landmark 2009 speech, in which for the first time he had publicly backed Palestinian statehood.

“Netanyahu did not say such a thing,” his office said in a statement, denying a claim by a lawmaker of his Likud party that the premier had declared the speech as “no longer valid.”

But Netanyahu, who hopes to win a third consecutive term in office on March 17, confirmed that any Israeli withdrawal from West Bank territory would be highly unlikely under his watch.

“Under the current circumstances in the Middle East, any territory that will be handed over will only be captured by radical Islamists, as has happened in Gaza and in southern Lebanon,” said the statement.

The declaration comes after Israel’s biggest-selling daily, the left-leaning Yediot Ahronot, over the weekend published a document that it said resulted from secret negotiations between a top Netanyahu envoy and a top representative of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

According to Yediot, the August 2013 document showed that Netanyahu had been willing to accept a land swap and a withdrawal from large parts of the West Bank, which would have involved uprooting numerous Jewish settlements.

Netanyahu’s aides quickly denied that.

In June 2009, three months after taking office and following U.S. pressure, Netanyahu, speaking at the central Israeli Bar Ilan University, said he backed the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Likud lawmaker and deputy minister Zipi Hotovely had over the weekend sought to clarify the party’s current position on Palestinian statehood, claiming that “the prime minister has told the public that the Bar Ilan speech is no longer valid.”

Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud is racing head to head with the Zionist Camp, a joint center-left list of Labour Party leader Isaac Herzog and former justice minister Tzipi Livni.

Most recent opinion polls have predicted that the Zionist Camp will win one or two mandates more than the Likud.

But barring last-minute surprises, analysts agree, Netanyahu has a much better chance of forming a coalition, likely to include hardline and ultra-Orthodox parties.

He is fighting for the votes of hardline Israelis, competing mainly against the pro-settler Jewish Home party of Economy Minister Naftali Bennett and the ultra-nationalist Israel Beiteinu party of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Photo: World Economic Forum via Flickr

Netanyahu’s U.S. Speech Drives Wedge Between Democrats, Israel

Netanyahu’s U.S. Speech Drives Wedge Between Democrats, Israel

By Michael A. Memoli, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned address to Congress next month is driving an uncomfortable and rarely seen wedge between congressional Democrats and Israel — and that may have been exactly what House Speaker John A. Boehner and other Republicans intended.

For many Democrats, and especially the more than two dozen Jewish members of Congress, Boehner’s decision to invite Netanyahu to speak about Iran’s nuclear program — despite objections from the White House — is forcing them to choose between their president and their long-standing support for Israel.

On Thursday, Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) became the third Jewish Democrat to say he would not attend the planned joint session speech, a surprising expression of protest in contrast to the usual outpouring of support and standing ovations U.S. lawmakers lavish on Israel’s leader.

“There’s a tension,” said Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), who has not decided whether to attend. “The prime minister’s coming puts us who are supportive of Israel in a difficult position, especially as Jews who do support Israel, because I think it’s totally inappropriate to come at this time.”

At least 20 other members of Congress have also vowed to skip the speech. Some see Netanyahu’s visit as an affront to the president, while others view it as the latest in a continuing effort by Republicans to upset the ties between Democrats and Jewish American voters and donors.

Boehner insisted the invitation was intended only to give a key ally a forum for discussing the Iran nuclear talks, in which Israel has a significant stake.

But privately, Republican aides haven’t hidden their delight at how the issue is vexing Democrats, without conceding that was the intent.

Democrats suspect politics were part of the reason Boehner broke the usual protocol by not coordinating the invitation of a foreign leader with the White House.

“I don’t know what’s in the speaker’s mind,” said Democratic Rep. Lois Frankel, who represents a district in south Florida with a sizable Jewish population and plans to attend the speech. “He could be thinking about Iran, he could be thinking about politics. … I am just very disturbed — and I would say upset — that Israel is to be used as a political football.”

Though Israel has long coveted the bipartisan support it enjoys in Congress, Netanyahu’s Likud Party and U.S. Republicans have moved closer together in recent years, joined by shared conservative ideologies and hawkish foreign policies. Evangelicals, who are often more pro-Israel than many Jewish Americans, have also pushed the GOP toward greater support of the Netanyahu government.

So have wealthy donors like casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who contributed more than $100 million to Republicans in the 2012 campaign and is expected to be a major player in the 2016 presidential race. Adelson, who is Jewish and is married to an Israeli, is also one of Netanyahu’s biggest political patrons; he owns a free, pro-government daily newspaper in Israel that has become one of the country’s most-read.

But in the U.S., 70 percent of American Jews identify with the Democratic Party, while just 22 percent with the GOP, according to a 2013 study by Pew Research Center. President Barack Obama won 69 percent of the Jewish American vote in 2012, according to exit polling reported by NBC News, though support dropped from 78 percent in his 2008 election.

“You’re seeing an emerging split between a part of the community that is politically in line with the prime minister and in line with the Republican Party, and a part of the community that is more supportive of a progressive political agenda here and the Labor Party there,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group. Boehner’s invitation “has successfully exposed that that difference can no longer be papered over.”

Obama publicly declined this week to offer advice to fellow Democrats when asked whether they should attend Netanyahu’s address, though he has said he wouldn’t meet with the prime minister when he comes next month, citing the proximity to Israel’s March 17 election.

Vice President Joe Biden, who would usually attend the speech as the president of the Senate, is proceeding with plans to travel abroad then.

Amid the initial controversy over the invitation, top Israeli officials worked the halls of the U.S. Capitol last week to gauge the level of concern, particularly among Democrats.

The speaker of Israel’s Knesset met separately with Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and the Israeli ambassador to the United States met with a small group of pro-Israel Democrats who expressed concern at how the planned visit had devolved into a partisan fight.

But this week Netanyahu sought to quell speculation that he might change plans, saying on Twitter that he was “determined” to address Congress.

Major Jewish groups have largely stayed out of the fray, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which will also host Netanyahu during his visit. But the Republican Jewish Coalition launched a petition urging support for the address. J Street, meanwhile, is calling on Boehner to reschedule the speech after Israeli elections.

For now, most Jewish Democrats plan to attend. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-CA) said it was “unseemly” to invite a foreign head of state to speak against White House policy, but that he would be a “gracious host.”

“One of the things that overshadows this whole controversy is the fact that there have been efforts over the last few years to politicize support for Israel,” he said. “The strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship has always been at its core a very bipartisan one. I think anything that threatens to jeopardize that is not good for the U.S. and is not good for Israel.”

Rep. Eliot L. Engel of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, dismissed the controversy as “a tempest in a teapot.”

“It doesn’t matter that the president and the prime minister don’t like each other,” he said. “I’m mostly concerned about the U.S.-Israel relationship and that it remains strong and remains bipartisan. … The minute Israel becomes a partisan issue, then the U.S.-Israel relationship suffers.”

The most vocal Democratic critics of the invitation have been non-Jews. Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the most senior Democratic senator, accused Republicans of orchestrating a “tawdry and high-handed stunt that has embarrassed not only Israel but the Congress itself.”

The Jewish Americans who are skipping the speech have been careful in discussing the issue, wary of escalating the controversy.

“There are other venues where I’d be open to hearing from Mr. Netanyahu, and there are other time periods where I think it’d be appropriate,” said Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI). “But I think this was done in a way that was unhelpful to the America-Israel relationship, and I don’t want to participate in it for that reason.”

Noting that some outside political and pro-Israel groups are already threatening electoral retribution for lawmakers who don’t attend, Yarmuth posted a 600-word statement explaining his view that Netanyahu “has plenty of other places to express his opinions.”

“It is both sad and ridiculous that attending this speech will be used as a litmus test for support of Israel,” Yarmuth said. “I will not contribute to the impression that this body does not support the president of the United States in foreign affairs.”

Photo: ehpien via Flickr

Israel Vows Tough Response In Killing Of Four Rabbis, Three Of Them Americans

Israel Vows Tough Response In Killing Of Four Rabbis, Three Of Them Americans

By Laura King and Batsheva Sobelman, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

JERUSALEM — Israel vowed a harsh response after two Palestinian attackers slashed and shot to death four rabbis who were praying in a Jerusalem synagogue early Tuesday — an attack that horrified Israelis, drew international condemnation and threatened to further inflame Jewish-Muslim tensions that were already running high over a contested holy site.

At least seven Israelis were hospitalized in the wake of the attack, the deadliest in Jerusalem since 2008. The two attackers, shot dead by police units that converged on the scene within minutes, were identified as Palestinian cousins from predominantly Arab east Jerusalem, which has been a flashpoint for attacks in recent months.

The attackers — armed with cleavers and handguns and said to have been shouting “God is great!” — burst into the synagogue in the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof during morning prayers, witnesses said. Many devoutly religious immigrants to Israel have settled in the area, and three of the four rabbis killed held American citizenship, the State Department said. A fourth was a Briton, according to Israeli officials.

The White House identified the slain Americans as Aryeh Kupinsky, Cary William Levine and Moshe Twersky. The statement did not provide hometowns.

President Barack Obama condemned the attack but said “it is all the more important for Israeli and Palestinian leaders and ordinary citizens to work cooperatively together to lower tensions, reject violence and seek a path forward towards peace.”

Witnesses described panic and pandemonium during the attack, with the dead and wounded crumpling to the floor, clutching bloodied sacred texts. Those who managed to make their way out of the house of prayer burst onto the street screaming for help.

For many Israelis, the specter of a calculated attack on Jews at prayer, in ritual garments, carried chilling overtones of historic persecution.

“Jewish worshipers lay dead in pools of blood, still wrapped in prayer shawls and phylacteries, with holy books strewn on the floor,” Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, who heads Zaka, an emergency response group led by Orthodox Jews, told Israel Radio. “Such sights I have never seen — they recall dark days.”

U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and expressed condolences for the attack. “This simply has no place in human behavior,” Kerry told reporters in London.

Netanyahu, who called top security officials to an emergency meeting, declared that the “despicable murderers” would not go unpunished. Within hours of the attack, a massive police contingent raided the family homes of the two assailants, identified as Udai Abu Jamal and Ghassan Abu Jamal, and Netanyahu later said the homes would be demolished and “inciters” held to account.

A government statement said unspecified “additional decisions … have been made in order to strengthen security throughout the country.” Israel had already redeployed hundreds of troops to the West Bank after a pair of lethal stabbing attacks last week.

In the wake of the latest attack, Israeli forces in east Jerusalem and several parts of the West Bank battled stone-throwing protesters, clashes that continued as night fell. A light-rail train passing through an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem was pelted with rocks, forcing it out of service.

At Kerry’s prompting, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a denunciation of the attack but coupled it with a call for a halt to Israeli “intrusions” on a site in the walled Old City revered by both Jews and Muslims.

The militant Hamas movement, while not claiming any involvement, praised the attack. Celebratory gunfire rang out in the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip and at several locations in the West Bank, and the group’s spokesman Sam Abu Zuhri called the attack a response to the “continuing crimes of the occupation.”

The brutal nature of the attack, the shock of such a strike on a house of prayer and the fact that the episode took place in a part of western Jerusalem considered far removed from recent clashes boded ill for any calming of violence that has roiled Jerusalem for months.

Four people on the Israeli side have been killed in the last month in vehicular attacks by Palestinians, and in a spreading of “lone wolf” attacks outside the city, a soldier last week was fatally stabbed in Tel Aviv and a Jewish woman killed outside a West Bank settlement bloc.

Much of the current burst of ill feeling is centered on the hilltop in the Old City revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. Jews are allowed to visit the site but not pray there, and activists — some from within Netanyahu’s government — have been calling for a change to that long-standing “status quo,” infuriating Muslims across the Islamic world.

Kerry visited Jordan — the formal custodian of the site — last week to try to ease frictions, winning pledges from Netanyahu and Abbas in separate meetings for calming measures. But calls for moderation are likely to be lost in the outcry over the attack and any retaliatory strikes arising from it.

“We’re at war,” Israeli lawmaker Aryeh Deri, who comes from the neighborhood where the attack took place, told Israel radio. Neighbors and relatives of the attackers described them as heroes of the Palestinian cause.

Palestinian media depicted the synagogue attack itself as retaliation, coming two days after an Arab bus driver was found hanged at a bus depot in the western part of Jerusalem. A forensic report ruled that there was no sign of foul play and that the death was a suicide, but Palestinian media reports sharply contested the impartiality of the examiners.

Tuesday’s assault was the most lethal in Jerusalem in six years, since a yeshiva on the city’s outskirts was attacked by a gunman, killing eight of the religious students. An off-duty army officer killed that attacker.
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(Sobelman is a special correspondent. Special correspondent Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank contributed to this report.)

AFP Photo/Gali Tibbon