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Israel’s Foreign Minister Snubs Netanyahu Coalition Invite

Israel’s Foreign Minister Snubs Netanyahu Coalition Invite

By Ofira Koopmans, dpa (TNS)

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced Monday that he will not join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, dealing a blow to the incumbent’s emerging coalition in the 11th hour of negotiations.

“We are going to serve the people from the opposition,” he said of his six-seat hardline right-wing Israel Beiteinu party.

Defying predictions, Netanyahu’s right-wing, nationalist Likud won 30 seats in the March 17 election, paving the way for him to serve a fourth term in office as premier.

The incumbent must present his government by Wednesday midnight.

Lieberman’s ultra-nationalist Beiteinu has long been considered a natural ally for Netanyahu’s Likud party in coalition negotiations, but Lieberman’s rejection means Netanyahu may be reduced to a slim majority of 61 seats in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, the Knesset.

Lieberman told reporters in Jerusalem that he will also resign from his post as foreign minister.

Netanyahu’s Likud party signed its first two coalition agreements Wednesday last week, with Kulanu and United Torah Judaism (UTJ). Lieberman cited promises made in those agreements as grounds for not joining the coalition.

The coalition Netanyahu was building with two ultra Orthodox parties, another right-wing party and the center-right Kulanu party of finance minister-designate Moshe Kahlon “is not to our taste, to say the least,” Lieberman said.

“This government has no intention of uprooting Hamas,” he said of the Islamist Palestinian movement in de facto control of the Gaza Strip, mentioning one reason of his dissatisfaction.

The next Netanyahu government would not be a nationalist one, “but the personification of opportunism,” he charged.

According to recent local media reports, Lieberman holds a grudge against Netanyahu, blaming him for an ongoing police investigation into allegations of corruption by senior members of his party.

The Likud is also negotiating with another ultra-Orthodox party, Shas (seven seats) and with the pro-settler, right-wing Jewish Home (eight seats).

Netanyahu still has a good chance of presenting his fourth government by the Wednesday midnight deadline. But if he fails, President Reuven Rivlin can appoint another lawmaker to the task of forming a government. That would then likely be Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog.

As part of the agreement signed last week with UTJ, a social reform program introduced with much fanfare during the previous government, will be canceled.

The program had included criminal sanctions for ultra-Orthodox Torah students who refuse to report for compulsory military service. It had also included a cancellation of other privileges and financial benefits for the ultra-Orthodox population in Israel.

(c)2015 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany), Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of the U.S. Congress at the Capitol on March 3, 2015 in Washington, D.C. (Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS)

Protest By Ethiopian Israelis Turns Violent In Tel Aviv

Protest By Ethiopian Israelis Turns Violent In Tel Aviv

By Batsheva Sobelman, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

JERUSALEM — Violence erupted on the streets of Tel Aviv on Sunday as a demonstration by Ethiopian Israelis protesting what they said was police brutality against their community spiraled out of control.

Firing stun grenades and tear gas, police in riot gear or mounted on horses battled enraged demonstrators, who threw glass bottles and started fires in the heart of the city while threatening to break into City Hall.

Ambulances raced with the injured from both sides as explosions, sirens, smoke and screams filled the air.

Sunday’s demonstration began tensely but peacefully as hundreds, then thousands of protesters, mostly Ethiopian Israelis, marched waving national flags and placards against racism and police brutality and calling for equality. A similar protest in Jerusalem on Thursday turned violent, and police initially tried to avoid engagement during Sunday’s protest.

In a demonstration organizers said was aimed at bringing the plight of one of Israel’s most marginalized communities to the heart of mainstream Israel, protesters blocked the Ayalon Freeway and brought traffic in the busy metropolis to a standstill.

After five hours of a restrained standoff, the peace collapsed as police moved to open the highway and disperse the crowds, pushing them into the city, where matters deteriorated swiftly despite repeated calls of both police and protest leaders for restraint.

At least 23 police officers and 7 protesters were injured. Police said more than 40 people were arrested.

The highest ranks of Israeli police, including Commissioner Yohanan Danino, were on the scene. “We did everything to enable protest but we will not condone vandalism and violence,” Danino said. “We will pursue those who used violence.”

During a lull in the clashes, when both sides appeared to be regrouping, Pnina Tamano-Shata, a former lawmaker, used a loudspeaker and chanted a slogan from the biblical Book of Psalms: “Justice, justice you shall pursue.” Dozens of young men sat on the ground behind her, and the violence appeared to subside.

One demonstrator, who did not give his name, faced television cameras and, cloaked in an Israeli flag, said Israel uses the Ethiopian Israelis as cannon fodder.

“We fought in Gaza. We fought in Lebanon before that. We fight and die for the country, which treats us like third-rate citizens. Evidently, our blood is only good for wars,” he said, vowing that the protests would continue for as long as it takes to achieve equality and justice.

The protests were triggered by a video that emerged a week ago showing two policemen pouncing on Damas Pakada, an Israeli soldier of Ethiopian descent, and beating him with no immediately apparent reason while he was standing by his bicycle on a street in the central city of Holon.

The video, taken from a security camera on a nearby business, circulated in social media and swiftly sparked outrage. Ethiopian Israelis have long complained of harsh treatment at the hands of police as well as discrimination by the Israeli establishment.

More than three decades after the first daring Mossad operations that brought Ethiopian Jews to Israel, the community of immigrants and native Israelis now numbers close to 140,000. Modest inroads have been seen some Ethiopian Jews make it to the forefront of public life in Israel as lawmakers, journalists or doctors, but as a whole, the community still struggles for equality and integration into Israeli society.

Just over half live below the poverty line. They are underrepresented in public service and overrepresented in jail. Forty percent of those held in the Ofek prison — a jail for minors — are of Ethiopian extraction, far above their 2 percent representation in Israeli society.

The native Israelis born to immigrant families serve in the military — once the great equalizer for Jewish youth — but activists say they still get bounced from nightclubs, insulted on public transportation and harshly treated by police. The fact that Damas Pakada was wearing an army uniform when he was beaten by police only adds insult to injury, they say.

Danino recently announced plans to appoint a committee to review cases against Ethiopian Israelis, and reportedly intends to close cases found to involve discrimination or mistreatment.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will meet with the beaten soldier on Monday and convene a discussion with Ethiopian community leaders, the police commissioner and government authorities who oversee immigration and social welfare.

On Thursday, as protesters neared his official residence in Jerusalem, Netanyahu released a statement condemning the beating captured on video and declaring that those responsible would be held accountable.

“The immigrants from Ethiopia and their families are dear to us,” he said, pledging that the state would do more to “ease their integration into society.”

But protesters were not impressed. One woman noted to television cameras that it took Netanyahu nearly a full week to condemn the incident. “Where was he all those days? This pains me.”

One of the police officers caught on camera was suspended from police duties and is under investigation by the Justice Ministry.

(Sobelman is a special correspondent.) (c)2015 Los Angeles Times, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Lilach Daniel via Flickr

Israeli Woman Killed In West Bank, Soldier Wounded In Tel Aviv

Israeli Woman Killed In West Bank, Soldier Wounded In Tel Aviv

By Batsheva Sobelman, Los Angeles Times

JERUSALEM — A young Israeli woman was stabbed to death outside a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Monday, officials said, hours after a Palestinian assailant stabbed and critically wounded an Israeli soldier in Tel Aviv. Two others were injured in the West Bank attack.

The violence came amid a spike in tensions that followed months of street clashes in Jerusalem and a weekend of rioting in Arab towns inside Israel after the police killing of a young Arab Israeli man who battered a police vehicle with officers inside.

Details were sketchy about the attack in the West Bank, but the Associated Press reported that the young woman and the two others were assaulted at a bus stop outside the settlement of Alon Shvut. Initial reports described the victim as a teenager, but authorities later said she was 25.

In the other attack, in Tel Aviv, police officials and eyewitnesses said an assailant stabbed the soldier several times with a knife at the Haganah train station before being intercepted by two passersby, who chased him and alerted police as he fled.

The victim, described only as a 20-year-old soldier, was stabilized after resuscitation efforts at the scene and transferred to the nearby Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer with critical injuries.

Police forces pursued the suspect and apprehended him on the top floor of a building 200 yards away from the scene. He was taken into custody with reportedly light injuries sustained during a struggle and the arrest.

The Palestinian news agency Maan identified the assailant in the Tel Aviv incident as 18-year-old Nur al-Din Abu Haysha, from the Askar refugee camp in Nablus. According to Israeli police, the attacker had entered Israel without a permit.

“We regard this incident as extremely grave,” Tel Aviv police commander Benzi Sau told reporters at the site of the Tel Aviv attack. Preliminary information suggests the assailant had also tried to grab the soldier’s weapon, he said.

Sau urged the public to alert the police to any suspicious person or behavior. “This is part of the current vigilance we all live in, police and civilians as one,” he said.

The attacks are part of a spate of violence that appears to be spreading on both sides of the so-called Green Line.

Visiting the scene of the Tel Aviv attack, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonowitz was heckled by citizens who asked, “Where is the security?”

“I had no doubt that terrorism would reach Tel Aviv,” hawkish lawmaker Danny Danon told local media. He urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Aharonowitz to “stop talking and start acting.”

Earlier Monday, Dannon announced he would run for chairman of the Likud party against Netanyahu, whom he said has “lost his way” and abandoned the party’s policy on diplomacy and security issues.

AFP Photo/Jack Guez

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FAA Lifts U.S. Flight Restrictions For Tel Aviv

FAA Lifts U.S. Flight Restrictions For Tel Aviv

By Ryan Parker, Los Angeles Times

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday night lifted its ban on U.S. flights to and from Tel Aviv.

The decision was made after the U.S. government determined that Israel had proper measures in place to “mitigate potential risks to civil aviation” during the ongoing hostilities in and around the Gaza Strip, according to an FAA news release.

The FAA “will continue to closely monitor the very fluid situation … and take additional actions, as necessary,” according to the statement.

The FAA ban was imposed Tuesday after a rocket fired from Gaza struck a home about a mile from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, apparently circumventing Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system.

The ban was greeted with criticism from Israel, where tourism from the United States is a key driver of the economy, especially in the summer. A cutoff of flights to the United States was also seen as an important psychological setback in a country that feels isolated in a region where it is surrounded by adversaries.

Israeli newspapers said tens of thousands of Israelis were stranded overseas and thousands of tourists unable to leave Israel as planned. Most major European airlines also canceled their flights, though Israel’s national airline, El Al, and some international carriers continued to fly.

AFP Photo / Eric Thayer

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