RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Elections-Super-Tuesday-and-US-Israel-relations-619111

The Israeli public could be forced to undergo a fourth round of elections, which nobody wants and many have threatened to boycott.

The day after Israelis go the polls on Monday to elect the next Knesset, the greatest number of Democratic Party primaries will be held across the United States. The proximity of Super Tuesday to the Jewish state’s third attempt in 11 months to determine the makeup of the next government in Jerusalem is coincidental. Their outcomes, however, will have been mutually influenced.

This might seem peculiar, given the two countries’ completely different electoral and political systems, and the fact that the ballots counted in the US on March 3 merely will give a good idea about which Democratic candidate is likely to win the presidential nomination and run against the Republican incumbent, US President Donald Trump, in November.The Israeli election, on the other hand, is a national one, where voters will be opting this time around for one of 29 (!) parties vying for as many of the 120 Knesset seats as they can get.

The head of the largest party – or the one that has the best chance of forming a majority coalition – will be tasked with establishing the government.

For the past 11 years that figure has been Likud head Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Next week, he is likely to be in that position as well. Barring a surprise shift, again he will be unable to garner a 61-seat majority. If this happens, the Israeli public could be forced to undergo a fourth round of elections, which nobody wants and many have threatened to boycott.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15646/israel-election-iranians-palestinians

The Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip seem to have endorsed the banner of Netanyahu’s political rivals in Israel: “Anyone but Bibi (Netanyahu’s nickname).” The two Palestinian groups ‘ perceive Netanyahu as a major threat to their dream of destroying Israel and as someone who has further strengthened Israel’s standing in the international arena.

The Palestinians are apparently convinced that it would be easier to extort concessions from inexperienced politicians such as Benny Gantz, Moshe Ya’alon and Gabi Ashkenazi. For the Palestinians, Netanyahu is a hard nut to crack. His strong stance against their tactics of intimidation have been, for them, a source of concern.

Abbas and his officials, in short, are telling the Israelis: “Look, we have a problem here. This man, Netanyahu, will not surrender to us — and that is why you need to elect a new leader.”

Abbas, not surprisingly, would doubtless prefer Israelis to replace Netanyahu with a weak leader who would comply with all his demands and take Israel back to the indefensible pre-1967 armistice lines — a move that would most likely result in the militias of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Iran sitting on the West Bank hilltops overlooking Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport.

The Palestinians are doing their absolute utmost to ensure that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party do not win in Israel’s general election on Monday, March 2.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, seem to have endorsed the banner of Netanyahu’s political rivals in Israel: “Anyone but Bibi (Netanyahu’s nickname).” The two Palestinian groups perceive Netanyahu as a major threat to their dream of destroying Israel and as someone who has further strengthened Israel’s standing in the international arena.

In a last-minute, apparently desperate attempt to undermine the current Israeli prime minister’s chances of winning another election, the PA has launched a public relations campaign to explain to the Israeli public why they should not vote for Netanyahu.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15637/deal-of-the-century

Israel’s and America’s upcoming elections are fateful for both countries and will determine who will conduct the negotiations moving forward. If no clear message is conveyed by Israel — immediately — negotiations after the elections could take this silence as tacit agreement.

The political situation in the United States is no less crucial a factor. American presidents are elected to protect American interests — and these often shift. It is therefore important that Israel not do a deal based on oral understandings of how Israel will be at liberty to respond if and when the Palestinians violate the terms of the agreement (right now, oral understandings are all that exist), as we do not know how those oral understandings will be transmitted or accepted by the next US Congress and administration.

There is a world of difference between the approaches of the candidates from the two major US parties… Israel could easily find itself again having traded tangible facts on the ground for intangible, unenforceable promises.

If Trump is re-elected, the version of his plan eventually ratified by Israel will serve as the basis for negotiations. It is therefore crucial that the threats to Israel’s security are corrected before Israel embraces the “conceptual maps.” If, on the other hand, President Trump is not re-elected, the “Peace to Prosperity” vision may prove to be yet another Oslo Accord — a dangerous hole into which Israel will fall without a safety net. If Israel were to approve the plan now, essentially agreeing to the potential creation, at the end of four years, of a Palestinian state, the overwhelming temptation is for a future US president to begin the conversation from there, and not necessarily hold the Palestinian side to its obligations — which is precisely what happened under the Oslo framework.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/polls-gaza-netanyahu-and-gantz/

Even members of the public forced into bomb shelters on a regular basis realize that the prime minister is doing the best he can to keep Hamas at bay, while reserving the option to launch a ground incursion into Gaza as a last resort.

During live coverage of the bombardment of southern Israel by Islamic Jihad rocket fire on Monday, a Red Alert siren sent a TV reporter—along with a local shop owner whom he was interviewing and other people taking cover from the terrorist barrage from Gaza—into a nearby stairwell.

Tragically well-versed in the drill, the handful of passers-by entered the building and positioned themselves, single file, down a flight of steps, with the broadcast journalist and his cameraman in tow. As all waited for the wail of the siren to subside—listening for the familiar sound of explosions from projectile landings, Iron Dome interceptions and Israel Defense Forces’ bombings of terrorist targets over the border—the interview continued.

But it didn’t proceed as the reporter had hoped or anticipated.

After bemoaning the near-bankruptcy that his shoe store has been suffering as a result of the security situation in his city, the interviewee praised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“There’s nobody like Bibi!” he exclaimed, smiling broadly.

“No, no, let’s not talk politics,” the reporter admonished.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15602/fortunate-arabs

Meanwhile, there are other Arabs in the region who are more fortunate than the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip: the Arab citizens of Israel. These citizens are lucky that they do not live under the rule of the corrupt and incompetent leaders of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. These Arab citizens are fortunate because they live in Israel.

Here is more unwelcome good news regarding the Arab citizens of Israel: The Israeli government announced in 2018 that in the last two years, it has invested 4.5 billion shekels ($1.3 billion) in the Arab regions. The government also announced that it would invest 20 million shekels ($5.6 million) in the Arab high-tech market. Overall, the government has decided to invest 15 billion shekels ($4.3 billion) in the Arab-Israeli sector by the end of 2020….

The $50 billion dollars the Trump plan offered the Palestinians will end up being withheld because Palestinian leaders have something else on their minds: to continue enriching their own bank accounts at the expense of their people. No wonder, then, that when Arabs — including Palestinians — dream of a better life, they often dream of moving to Israel. No wonder, as well, that most Arab Israelis do not want to become part of a Palestinian state, and have been demanding to stay in Israel.

Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip can only dream about the quality of life their Arab brethren enjoy in Israel.

Thanks to the current leaders in the PA and Hamas, the Palestinian people are sunk in abysmal living conditions. Poverty, unemployment, and repression have been their lot for decade after decade. This is because the PA and Hamas have repeatedly rejected peace plans that offer prosperity to the Palestinians.

Recently, the PA and Hamas rejected US President Donald Trump’s plan for Mideast peace, which includes a $50 billion investment and infrastructure proposal to create at least a million new jobs for Palestinians. The plan calls for projects worth $27.5 billion in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and $9.1 billion for Palestinians in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. Projects “envisioned include those in the health care, education, power, water, high-tech, tourism, and agriculture sectors.”

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-jewish-palestinian/

The claim by the elected representatives of the Israeli Arab public that they are the original owners of the land while the Jewish citizens of Israel (and, by implication, the State of Israel itself) are “colonialist invaders” is a complete inversion of historical reality. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s declaration about the legality of the West Bank’s Jewish communities, along with President Trump’s peace plan based on that principle, offers a unique opportunity to correct that mistaken notion by applying sovereignty to all Israeli West Bank communities.

The elected representatives of Israel’s Arab community claim that the Palestinians are the original owners of the land—an indigenous minority disinherited by foreign invaders. According to this notion, which is aimed at undermining the Zionist narrative about the Jewish people’s return to its historical homeland, the Arabs of the Land of Israel—like the Indians in America, the aborigines in Australia, and the Zulu tribes in South Africa—are victims of European imperialism/colonialism, which turned them into a disenfranchised and oppressed minority in their own land. From this standpoint, Zionism is a crude perversion of Judaism because the Jews do not constitute a people but only a religious community with no national attributes or aspirations, let alone any right to a state of their own in even a tiny part of the Islamic-Arab-Palestinian patrimony.

That thesis is not only baseless but a complete inversion of the historical truth.

It was Arab/Muslim invaders who came to the Land of Israel as an ascendant imperialist force in the decade after the Prophet Muhammad’s death and laid the groundwork for the colonization of this land by a long string of Muslim empires up to the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI. During this lengthy era, the non-Jewish and non-Christian residents of the land identified themselves as Muslims—not as Arabs, and certainly not as Palestinians—until WWI, when the idea of Arab nationalism gathered steam with the help of British imperialism.