RUTHFULLY YOURS

What can Netanyahu do to mitigate the impact of the probes on his ability to do his job?

Over the weekend, it was reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports legislation that would change the procedure for declaring war. The bill, supported by the government as well as by Netanyahu’s opponent and former finance minister Yair Lapid, involves implementing lessons learned from past experiences.

Under the suggested law, the government will provide the security cabinet with blanket authority to authorize military operations at the beginning of its tenure. By limiting the number of people involved in decision making regarding actual operations, leaks can be minimized and the element of surprise can be protected.

Given the wide support the bill enjoys, and its substance, the media could have been expected to cover the move in a sober-minded way.

But alas, there was no chance of that happening amid the media circus surrounding the criminal probes of Netanyahu. The desultory probes were recently fortified by the deal Netanyahu’s former chief of staff Ari Harow cut with the prosecution to incriminate his former boss in exchange for leniency in the ongoing corruption probe of Harow’s alleged influence peddling.

Now, with Netanyahu’s sworn enemies in the media and the political Left braying for his immediate resignation, the war powers bill, like everything else he is likely to initiate in the coming months and years, is being reported as nothing more than an attempt to change the subject.

None of the probes are expected to conclude any time soon. Legal experts assess they will stretch well into 2019. This means Netanyahu will be under a cloud of suspicion at least until the end of his current term of office. And that is not good for the country.

So what can Netanyahu do to mitigate the impact of the probes on his ability to do his job? The answer is complicated. On the one hand, it is fairly clear that he won’t be able to do anything to end the probes and not because he is accused of doing terrible things. To the contrary, he is accused of doing ridiculously stupid and harmless things.

The police are conducting two investigations of the prime minister. In the first, they are investigating whether he received too many gifts from his friends. Specifically, they want to know if he received too many cigars from his friend Arnon Milchen and whether he received other presents from other friends.

The second probe relates to a deal he discussed but never made with his arch-nemesis Yediot Aharonot publisher Arnon Mozes under which Mozes would give less hostile coverage of Netanyahu and in exchange, Netanyahu would get Yediot’s pro-Netanyahu competitor Israel Hayom to cut back its circulation. In the event, the talks went nowhere. In 2014 Netanyahu broke up his government and went to early elections in 2015 to prevent a bill – supported by 24 lawmakers in a preliminary vote – which would have bankrupted Israel Hayom from moving forward.

The 24 lawmakers that supported the bill received terrific coverage in Yediot. But none of them – including former justice minister Tzipi Livni – are under investigation. The police’s lack of interest in Livni is particularly notable. She advanced the bill despite the fact that then attorney general Yehuda Weinstein determined it was unconstitutional. She based her decision on a legal opinion produced for her by Yediot’s attorney.

FINALLY, THE third investigation doesn’t involve Netanyahu at all. Instead his attorney, confidante and cousin David Shimron is under investigation. And according to investigative reporter Yoav Yitzhak, the probe unraveled this week when the state’s witness was shown to have lied either to police investigators or to his own attorneys about Shimron’s role in brokering a deal for Israel to buy new submarines from Germany.

Netanyahu supported the purchase, indeed, he touted it. His media foes allege that he only supported the purchase, which was opposed by the Defense Ministry, because Shimron was involved.

This allegation itself makes clear the absurdity of the probe.

The PLO became the first terrorist organization to have a seat at the UN and diplomatic representation in a Western country.

Daniel Pipes suggested measures to move the conflict in a constructive direction without causing major conflagration: require the Palestinian Authority (PA) pay for all damages inflicted by terrorists, including a very high price for each stolen life; burying the dead terrorists without returning them to their families; severely limiting access to West Bank territories ruled by the PA; banning PA leaders from entering Israeli airports if they make inflammatory remarks and each time there is anti-Israeli violence, or even asking them to use Jordanian airports from now on.

Why not tell European leaders that the Palestinian Authority is still a genocidal terrorist organization? Why not ask them how they can agree to finance in the Middle East what they claim to reject with horror in Europe?

The latest slaughter in the land of Israel took place in Halamish, Samaria, on July 21. A Palestinian stabbed to death a Jewish grandfather and two of his children. The grandmother was injured seriously. Countless similar attacks occurred in Israel in the recent and not-so-recent past.

Once again, thousands of Palestinian Arabs joyfully celebrated the murders. Some handed out candy.

The murderer was praised by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas. If he had been shot to death, he would have instantly become a martyr of Islam. A street in Ramallah would be named after him. His picture would be posted in storefronts in the territories occupied by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and his family would be rewarded with a high “salary” for life.

The killer explained his crime by his willingness to “defend the al-Aqsa mosque” — which in fact was never attacked or even threatened by Israel. He did not hide his hatred for Jews. In his last Facebook post, he described them as monkeys and pigs.

His mother showed her pride for her son and his actions.

The murders followed Muslim riots after Israel installed metal detectors at the Temple Mount entrances, as exist in other mosques worldwide — in response to the murder of two Israeli policemen by Muslim terrorists who succeeded in bringing weapons to the site. The Israeli government did not prohibit access to the al-Aqsa mosque; it only wished to prevent further attacks. That a mosque could be used as a base for terrorist attacks seems to have been considered normal by the rioters.

Since then, the Israeli government decided to remove the metal detectors, as well as surveillance cameras that had been added later.

PLO chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas scored a victory against Israel at the Temple Mount. But it was a Pyrrhic one.http://www.jpost.com/printarticle.aspx?id=501928

Days after the government bowed to his demand and voted to remove the metal detectors from the Temple Mount, Abbas checked into the hospital for tests. The 82-year-old dictator has heart disease and a series of other serious health issues. And he has refused to appoint a successor.

It is widely assumed that once he exits the stage, the situation in the PA-ruled areas in Judea and Samaria – otherwise known as Areas A and B – will change in fundamental ways.

This week, two prominent Palestinian advocates, Hussein Agha and Ahmad Samih Khalidi, published an article in The New Yorker entitled “The end of this road: The decline of the Palestinian national movement.”

Among other things, they explained that Abbas’s death will mark the dissolution of the Palestinian national identity. That identity has already been supplanted in Judea and Samaria by local, tribal identities. In their words, “The powerful local ties made it impossible for a Hebronite to have a genuine popular base in Ramallah, or for a Gazan to have a credible say in the West Bank.”

It will also be the end of the PLO and its largest faction, Fatah, founded by Yasser Arafat in 1958 and led by Abbas since Arafat’s death in 2004.

Fatah, they explain, has “no new leaders, no convincing evidence of validation, no marked success in government, no progress toward peace, fragile links to its original setting abroad and a local environment buffeted by the crosswinds of petty quarrels and regional antagonisms.”

One of the reasons the Palestinians have lost interest in being Palestinians is because they have lost their traditional political and financial supporters in the Arab world and the developing world. The Sunni Arab world, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, is now willing to publicly extol Israel as a vital ally in its struggle against Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. The so-called Arab street is increasingly incensed at the Palestinians for monopolizing the world’s attention with their never ending list of grievances against Israel even as millions in the Arab world suffer from war, genocide, starvation and other forms of oppression and millions more have been forced to flee their homes.

As for the developing world, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s refusal to visit with Abbas during his recent visit to Israel marked the official end of the Third World’s alliance with the PLO.

After Abbas departs, Agha and Khalidi identify three key actors that will seek to fill the military and political void. First and foremost, the Palestinian security services (PSF) will raise its head. The PSF is heavily armed and has been trained by the US military. Agha and Khalidi argue reasonably that as the best armed and best organized group in the area aside from the IDF, the PSF will likely seize power in one form or another.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque controversy has exposed, once again, the non-centrality of the Palestinian issue in the overall Arab order of priorities.http://theettingerreport.com/OpEd/OpEd—Israel-Hayom/Palestinian-issue-marginalized-by-Arabs.aspx

Contrary to Western media headlines, Arab policy-makers and the Arab Street are not focused on Palestinian rights and Al Aqsa, but on their own chaotic, raging local and regional challenges, which are not related to the Palestinian issue.

For example, while the top Palestinian religious leader, Mufti Muhammad Hussein, castigates Arab leaders for their inaction on behalf of the Al Aqsa Mosque, Egyptian President General Sisi, and the Egyptian street, are preoccupied with traumatizing economic and social decay and challenges; the dwindling level of tourism, which is a main source of national income; the lethal, domestic threat of Muslim Brotherhood terrorism; the Libyan chaos and its effective spillover into Egypt; the entrenchment of Islamic terrorism in the Sinai Peninsula, across the Gulf of Suez; the Gaza-based terrorism; the threatening collaboration of Turkey-Qatar-Iran and Turkey’s support of Hamas; the potentially-explosive border with Sudan; etc.

General Sisi invests much more time in geo-strategic coordination with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, other Arab Gulf States, the US and Israel – which are perceived as critical allies in combatting terrorism – than with the Palestinian Authority, which is perceived as a destabilizing entity.

According to the July 20, 2017 issue of the London-based Middle East Monitor, “Al Aqsa has been abandoned by those who profess the leadership of the Muslim World…. [Egypt’s and Saudi Arabia’s] cold indifference…is unworthy of institutions that profess to be the preeminent leaders of Muslims around the world…. The religious institutions in Makkah, Madinah and Cairo have gone absent without leave despite the dangerous situation at the Noble Sanctuary in occupied Jerusalem…. Both countries are spearheading a regional drive for full normalization of relations with Israel. Their reasoning is that friendship with Israel is the best guarantee of US support for themselves….”

The London-based Palestinian newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, published a cartoon, depicting the Arab World as an ostrich burying its head in the sand, while the Al Aqsa Mosque bleeds.

Since 1948, and in defiance of Western foreign policy, academia and media establishments, the Arab/Islamic agenda has transcended the Palestinian issue.

While showering the Palestinian issue with substantial talk, the Arab/Islamic walk has mostly been directed at other issues: the 1,400-year-old regional, intra-Arab/Islamic unpredictability, fragmentation, instability and intolerant violence; the Islamic Sunni terrorist machete at the throat of all pro-US Arab regimes; the clear and present danger, posed by Iran’s Ayatollahs, to the same regimes; the destructive role played by Qatar in the context of – and in assistance to – the Ayatollahs; the lethal, regional ripple effects of the disintegration of Iraq, Syria and Libya; the inherent, tectonic (disintegration) potential in every Arab regime; the impact of the global energy revolution on the potency of the Arab oil producing regimes; and the enhanced role of Israel in the battle against the aforementioned threats.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Conflict management, when applied to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, is insufficient to achieve Israel’s interests. What is needed is a strategy of renewed settlement that will educate the Palestinians about the costs of their actions, divide their ranks instead of tactically unifying them, and keep it a conflict over land – which can eventually be resolved – rather than over religion, which is probably unsolvable.https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/temple-mount-crisis/

Israel’s bureaucratic establishment – the IDF, Shabak, and Mossad, as well as many politicians, opinion makers, and commentators – supports the idea of conflict management in the relationship between Israel, the PA, and Hamas until some future time that might be more auspicious for peace.

They are wrong. As any businessperson knows, maintaining market share means losing ground to the competition. The same is true of politics in our region. Absorbing and containing Palestinian violence is a losing strategy, as the recent events on the Temple Mount prove.

The answer lies in the vision and strategy of settlement.

Why settlement and not some other strategy?

Israel’s policy of conflict management has encouraged the Palestinians to focus on the Temple Mount. Throughout the conflict, the Temple Mount has been the Palestinians’ most successful rallying point.

In 1929, when the Mufti popularized the slogan “al-Aqsa Is In Danger”, the population of Mandate Palestine rallied to defend it. It was only on the Temple Mount, 33 years after the Six Day War, that Israeli Arab citizens rioted in large numbers together with their counterparts from over the Green Line. They chanted, “In spirit and blood we will defend al-Aqsa”. Never before had they rallied over any other symbol of Palestinian nationalism.

The strategy of conflict management – the approach of dealing tactically with Palestinian violence – is turning the clash into a religious conflict, and religious conflicts are notoriously difficult to resolve. A renewed strategy of Israeli settlement would shift the conflict once again to nationalist land claims. Conflicts over land are by no means easily solved, but they at least have the potential to be be resolved at some future date.

A strategy of Israeli settlement in Judea and Samaria is also tactically wise. Conflict management promotes tactical unity among the Palestinians, who agree that because Israel wants to contain violence, it is in their interest to continue to foment it. A settlement strategy would divide the enemy rather than unite it. Abbas’s PA and its ruling party would almost certainly turn their attention to stopping settlement, while the Islamists – Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizb al-Tahrir, and their supporters – would champion the defense of al-Aqsa. Dividing the energies of Israel’s foes would go a long way towards reducing violence.

A Nablus resident who confessed this week to having strangled, bashed in the head of, and buried his Israeli girlfriend two months ago told reporters on Wednesday that he had done so to “help free Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.”

Mohammed Kharouf made this statement to the press after the Jerusalem Magistrates’ Court lifted a gag order on his case: the killing of 29-year-old Michal Halimi, a married, pregnant Jewish woman from the settlement of Adam. Halimi, whose body was discovered last week, had left her husband several months ago to move in with Kharouf, her Palestinian lover. It has not yet been established which of the men fathered the baby she was carrying.

Because this is the stuff novels are made of — a story that includes inter-ethnic intrigue, lust and the spilling of blood — the tragic tale has garnered much attention. But the perpetrator’s declaration that his motive was nationalistic, even though this is clearly a lie, is just as worthy of note.

Kharouf knew that his affair with a Jewish woman — let alone one carrying a child of dubious origin — would be sufficient to blacken his family’s reputation in Palestinian society, even if he “rectified” the situation by slaughtering the source of the shame. The wrath of his parents and their peers would make imprisonment in Israel seem like a holiday in comparison. Killing a Jewish Israeli in the name of the Palestinian cause, however, would turn Kharouf into a hero in the Palestinian Authority, which would provide him and his family with a lifelong stipend of more than $3,000 per month, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

It is this travesty, the monetary incentive for Palestinians to commit acts of terrorism, that spurred U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Dan Coats (R-‎Indiana) and Roy Blunt (R-Mississippi) last February to sponsor the Taylor Force Act. Named after ‎the former U.S. Army officer who was ‎stabbed to death on a trip to Israel in March 2016 by a knife-wielding Palestinian on a rampage in Tel Aviv, the bill aimed to halt American aid to the PA until it ‎stops paying salaries to imprisoned terrorists and the families of ‎those “martyred” while murdering innocent people.

On Thursday, a day after Kharouf declared in Jerusalem that he had killed his girlfriend on behalf of the Palestinian people, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened in Washington to pass the Taylor Force Act, which received bipartisan support after being amended several times in recent weeks. The adjustments were made to enable the transfer of funds to the PA for hospitals and other humanitarian projects, and to give the Palestinian leadership the opportunity to receive more money if and when it proves it has stopped rewarding terrorists.

This is a good symbolic move, but the PA is about as likely to cease its practice of paying terrorists as Kharouf is to retract his lie about killing Halimi for Palestinian nationalist reasons.

Mere weeks ago, at the end of June, PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced that he would not stop paying stipends to terrorists and their families, which he referred to as a “social responsibility.” After meeting in Jerusalem on June 21 with Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, and with Jason Greenblatt, the president’s special Middle East envoy, and U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem Donald Blome, Abbas still would not succumb.

Last week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his security cabinet caved in to the demands of the PLO and its partners in Hamas, the Islamic Movement, Jordan, Iran and Turkey by agreeing to remove metal detectors and other security screening equipment from the Temple Mount. The equipment was installed last month in response to Palestinian incitement and acts of jihadist violence against Israelis, including the murder of two policemen, at Judaism’s holiest site.http://carolineglick.com/losing-and-winning-the-temple-mount/

After polls showed 77% of Israelis felt he and his cabinet members capitulated to terrorism, Netanyahu issued a statement thanking US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Jared Kushner and Trump’s senior negotiator Jason Greenblatt for their help in resolving the crisis.

The underlying message of Netanyahu’s statement was that he and his ministers folded like a cheap suit to our enemies’ demands, effectively ceding Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount to our enemies because Kushner and Greenblatt pressured them to do so.

But then this week, a congressional intern did us the favor of surreptitiously recording and leaking remarks Kushner made on the issue in off-record remarks to interns at the White House. Kushner’s remarks, which came in response to a question about his role in mediating the Palestinian conflict with Israel, were fairly detailed.

Regarding the Temple Mount crisis, Kushner justified Israel’s decision to place metal detectors at the entrance of the Temple Mount. In his words, following the murder of the policemen by terrorists armed with guns smuggled onto the Mount, “putting up metal detectors on the Temple Mount… is not an irrational thing to do.”

Kushner also emphasized several times the central role that Palestinian incitement played in fomenting the violence on the Temple Mount. He drew the logical conclusion that the same incitement which fomented the violence on the Temple Mount led to the massacre of the Saloman family in their home in Halamish two weeks ago.

Unlike all previous US mediators, Kushner didn’t blame “both sides” for causing the violence. He placed the blame squarely on the Palestinians who incited and committed murder.

In speaking this way, Kushner made clear that he isn’t the type of person who will apply bone-breaking pressure on Israel to capitulate to the demands of terrorist murderers. Certainly Netanyahu and his ministers are strong enough to withstand whatever pressure Kushner and Greenblatt may have brought to bear on them last week.

Indeed, as one administration official put it, “The idea that the same Netanyahu who withstood eight years of unrelenting pressure from the Obama administration crumpled under pressure from Kushner and Greenblatt is simply ridiculous.”

So if it wasn’t American pressure that convinced Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and their colleagues in the security cabinet to crumple, why did they do it?

All of their instincts were pointing them down the opposite path.