If the U.S. Goes to War With Iran, Netanyahu Will Be the Prime Suspect
"Landgrab continues - Israel plans to entrench annexation of East Jerusalem: Report"
He convinced Trump that Tehran will capitulate to crippling sanctions and a credible military threat – but the ayatollahs disagree
Chemi Shalev May 19, 2019 3:56 PM
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The attempt to distance itself from an American military operation in the Middle East, as if Israel was merely a fan sitting in the bleachers cheering its favorite team, inevitably sparks analogies to Yitzhak Shamir’s policy of restraint in the 1991 Gulf War and Ariel Sharon .. https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/TAG-ariel-sharon-1.5598883 ’s similar attitude during the 2003 war in Iraq. Shamir’s task was rendered far more difficult because Israel was directly attacked by Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles, but was infinitely easier as well, because no one in his right mind could blame Israel for Saddam’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
And while Israel did not come under direct attack in the 2003 Iraq War, it was nonetheless compelled to defend itself against claims, which proliferated as the war progressed, that it had pushed President George W. Bush to decide on the attack in the first place. In the lead up to that ill-fated war, Netanyahu was once again one of a handful of prominent Israelis who preferred to break the silence. In public testimony before the Government Reform Committee of the House of Representatives in 2002, Netanyahu assured American lawmakers that Saddam either had nuclear weapons or was on the verge of acquiring them, with the help of hidden centrifuges “no bigger than washing machines.” Deposing Saddam, Netanyahu promised, would do wonders for the Middle East as a whole.
Even though he was a private citizen then, Netanyahu’s testimony provided critics with supposedly incontrovertible proof of Israel’s involvement in pushing Bush to war. Netanyahu’s testimony has resurfaced in recent days to ostensibly show Netanyahu’s tendency to inflate, exaggerate, make mountains out of molehills and to view U.S. military might as the ultimate response to threats on Israel, whether they emanate from Baghdad or Tehran.
But even without his damning testimony from the past, and even if Netanyahu doesn’t say another word, if war breaks out between the U.S. and Iran, he will be named as the prime suspect as far as its opponents are concerned. Netanyahu, with the assistance of like-minded allies in the U.S. and the Middle East, persuaded Donald Trump to abandon Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Netanyahu convinced Trump that a combination of crippling economic sanctions and a credible military threat will force Tehran to beg for a new and improved nuclear deal, which will include its malevolent regional activities which were not addressed in “Obama’s deal”. And given that countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are far more belligerent towards Iran in private than they are in public, Netanyahu became a one-man cheerleading squad for Trump’s latest moves.
But while the campaign to blame Israel for the Iraq War was limited to a relatively small clique of its most vociferous critics – the most prominent of which were Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer in their book about the Israel lobby .. https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-im-not-anti-israel-1.5245373 – conflagration with Iran would dramatically expand the circle of Israel-accusers. When Walt and Mearsheimer published their book a dozen years ago, Israel still enjoyed wide partisan support in Congress. Its situation today is substantially worse: After burning his bridges with American liberals, including most Jews .. https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/TAG-jews-in-america-1.5599108, and after he openly challenged – and, in their eyes, humiliated – Obama over the 2015 nuclear deal, many Democrats .. https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/TAG-democrat-party-1.5599321 .. are far more likely to point fingers at Netanyahu the moment the first American soldier is killed.
Netanyahu vows to begin annexing West Bank settlements
"Landgrab continues - Israel plans to entrench annexation of East Jerusalem: Report"
By JOSEF FEDERMAN 2 hours ago
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JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Tuesday to annex the heart of the West Bank if he wins re-election next week, a move that could inflame the Middle East and extinguish any remaining Palestinian hope of establishing a separate state.
Arab leaders angrily condemned Netanyahu’s remarks, and a U.N. spokesman warned the step would be “devastating” to the prospects for a two-state solution.
Netanyahu said he would extend Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley — an area seen as the breadbasket of any Palestinian state — shortly after forming a new government and would move later to annex other Jewish settlements.
Such action would swallow up most of the West Bank territory sought by the Palestinians, leaving them with little more than isolated enclaves.
Netanyahu said it was important to act as President Donald Trump prepares to unveil his Mideast peace plan after the Sept. 17 election.
“This is a historic opportunity, a one-time opportunity, to extend Israeli sovereignty on our settlements in Judea and Samaria, and also on other important regions for our security, for our heritage, and for our future,” Netanyahu said, using the biblical terms for the West Bank.
The prime minister was not clear about the status of the Palestinians on the West Bank.
Over 2.5 million Palestinians live there and in east Jerusalem, in addition to nearly 700,000 Jewish settlers. Israel already has annexed east Jerusalem in a move that is not internationally recognized.
Netanyahu is locked in a tight race, and his announcement, the most detailed vision for the region that he has presented during his decade in power, was the latest in a series of frenetic moves he has made in recent days to try to rally hard-line voters.
The proposal was dismissed by opponents as election theatrics. They have accused Netanyahu of trying to divert attention from a corruption scandal and Israel’s security challenges. Later in the day, he was whisked away from a campaign event in southern Israel after Palestinian militants fired rockets toward the area.
Netanyahu’s plan would hinge on a number of factors, most critically whether Trump would back him. But Trump’s team of Mideast advisers is dominated by supporters of the settlements, and the muted reaction Tuesday from the U.S. indicated there would be little resistance.
U.S. officials said Netanyahu had told them about his proposal ahead of time and that they had not raised any objections because they do not believe it will affect prospects for an eventual peace agreement. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
The Israeli leader spoke as the White House announced the firing of national security adviser John Bolton. Bolton was a strong supporter of Netanyahu’s tough policies against Iran and had visited the Jordan Valley with the Israeli leader in June.
The Palestinians seek the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip — areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war — as part of a future independent state.
For Israel, the Jordan Valley is considered a security asset because it provides a buffer zone against potential attacks from the east. Many moderate Israelis believe Israel should retain some element of control in the area under a peace deal.
Palestinians, however, say there can be no independent state without the area, which comprises nearly a quarter of the West Bank. It is home to many Palestinian farms and also is one of the few remaining areas of the territory where the Palestinians have open space to develop.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said all agreements with Israel will be canceled if Netanyahu presses forward.
“We have the right to defend our rights and achieve our goals by all available means, whatever the results, as Netanyahu’s decisions contradict the resolutions of international legitimacy and international law,” he said.
The international community, along with the Palestinians, overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem illegal.
Netanyahu’s plan would turn Palestinian population centers into enclaves that he said he would seek to link to neighboring Jordan. Unlike Israeli settlers, West Bank Palestinians are not Israeli citizens and do not have the right to vote.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, condemned the announcement as “a serious escalation that undermines all peace efforts.”
At the United Nations, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also rejected the proposal. “Such a prospect would be devastating to the potential of reviving negotiations, regional peace and the very essence of a two-state solution,” said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
Netanyahu’s challengers accused him of playing politics. Yair Lapid, a leader of the Blue and White party, dismissed it as an “an election stunt.” Ehud Barak, a former prime minister who is campaigning to oust Netanyahu, said the prime minister “has no public or moral mandate to determine things so fateful to the state of Israel.”
During the hard-fought campaign, Netanyahu has alleged fraud in Arab voting areas and has been pushing to place cameras in polling stations on election day. He also claimed to have located a previously unknown Iranian nuclear weapons facility, and later this week he flies to Russia for a lightning meeting with President Vladimir Putin.
It’s too late for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine January 7, 2016 6.15am EST Author Padraig O'Malley John Joseph Moakley Distinguished Professor of Peace and Reconciliation, University of Massachusetts Boston https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=119715629
As Gaza War Escalates, New Front Opens in Israeli Cities
"Landgrab continues - Israel plans to entrench annexation of East Jerusalem: Report "Evangelicals and Empty Promises: A Year After Trump’s Embassy Move, Only One Country Has Followed U.S. to Jerusalem""
Rioting and mob violence between Arabs and Jews tore through towns and cities across Israel. Rockets from Gaza and Israeli airstrikes continued to kill civilians.
Israeli police patrolling on Wednesday during clashes between Jews and Arabs in Lod. Heidi Levine/Associated Press Patrick Kingsley
By Patrick Kingsley Published May 12, 2021Updated May 13, 2021, 7:07 p.m. ET
JERUSALEM — A new front opened in the military showdown between the Israeli Army and Palestinian militants in Gaza .. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-hamas-war.html .. on Wednesday as a wave of mob violence between Jews and Arabs spread across several Israeli cities, leading to riots and attacks in the streets as rockets and missiles streaked across the sky.
Israel said it assassinated 10 senior militants and continued to pound both military and residential areas across the Gaza Strip with airstrikes, while Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza, and its allies continued to fire rockets into civilian areas across central and southern Israel.
More than 1,000 rockets had been fired from Gaza by Wednesday night, most of them intercepted by an antimissile defense system, the Israeli military said.
More than 67 Palestinians, including 16 children, have died since the start of the conflict on Monday, Palestinian health officials said. The rockets fired by Hamas and its Islamist ally, Islamic Jihad, killed at least six Israeli civilians, including a 5-year-old boy and one soldier.
The funeral on Wednesday of a woman who died in a bombardment in Gaza. Hosam Salem for The New York Times
The fighting showed no signs of letting up. An Israeli military official said Wednesday that three infantry brigades were “preparing for a worst-case scenario,” confirming that a ground invasion could follow the bombardment from the air.
But the most unexpected developments played out on the streets of Israeli cities and towns, as rival Jewish and Arab mobs attacked people, cars, shops, offices and hotels.
One of the most chilling incidents was in Bat Yam, a seaside suburb south of Tel Aviv, where dozens of Jewish extremists took turns beating and kicking a man presumed to be an Arab, even as his body lay motionless on the ground. A video of the attack was broadcast on Israeli television.
An image taken from video showing a right-wing Israeli mob attacking an Arab man in Bat Yam. Kan 11 Public Broadcaster
In Acre, a northern coastal town, an Arab mob beat a man presumed to be Jewish with sticks and rocks, leaving him in a critical condition in another attack captured on video. In Tamra, an Arab mob attacked a man presumed to be Jewish and nearly beat him to death, according to an Arab paramedic who saved him.
Israeli officials said they had “locked down” the city of Lod in central Israel, the first time such an action has been taken in decades, and arrested 280 people accused of rioting across the country.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the violence as “anarchy” and convened an emergency cabinet meeting that lasted into the early hours of Thursday to “give more powers to the police” and enforce curfews “as needed.”
Israeli Arabs gathering next to a mosque during clashes among Jews, the Israeli police and Arabs, in the mixed town of Lod on Wednesday. Heidi Levine/Associated Press
The sudden turn of events, which in less than two full days has escalated from a localized dispute in Jerusalem to full-scale aerial war over Gaza to widespread civil unrest, shocked Israelis and Palestinians alike, and left some of the country’s most experienced leaders fearing that the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict was heading into new territory.
For years, leaders warned that a failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might eventually lead to fighting within the state of Israel itself, said Tzipi Livni, a veteran former cabinet minister and former chief negotiator in peace talks with the Palestinians.
“And this is exactly what is happening now,” she said. “What was maybe under the surface has now exploded, and created a combination that is really horrific.”
“I don’t want to use the words ‘civil war,’” she added. “But this is something that is new, this is unbearable, this is horrific, and I’m very worried.”
Israeli artillery firing toward Gaza on Wednesday. Dan Balilty for The New York Times
The unrest has shifted the Palestinian conflict to world attention after several years in which attempts to resolve it had faded from both the global and domestic agenda. Once a centerpiece of international diplomacy, there have been no serious peace talks since the Obama administration.
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Updated May 13, 2021, 5:47 p.m. ET3 hours ago 3 hours ago
President Donald J. Trump sidelined the Palestinian conflict, and persuaded four Arab governments to normalize relations with Israel, shattering decades of Arab consensus that resolving the Palestinian conflict and ending the occupation had to come first.
For weeks, ethnic tensions had been rising in Jerusalem, the center of the conflict. In April, far-right Jews marched through the city center, chanting “Death to Arabs,” and mobs of both Jews and Arabs attacked each other.
The situation finally boiled over after a police raid on one of Islam’s holiest sites, the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, on Monday, which the police said was in response to stone-throwing by Palestinian demonstrators.
Hamas launched long-range rockets at Jerusalem on Monday evening, prompting Israel to respond with airstrikes. The military conflict also unleashed a wave of protests and rioting in Arab areas across Israel that night.
An Israeli family after a rocket strike from Gaza in the city of Ashkelon on Wednesday. Dan Balilty for The New York Times
As the violence escalated, diplomats around the world called for both sides to end the fighting.
Speaking to reporters, President Joseph R. Biden said that he had spoken “for a while” to Mr. Netanyahu on Wednesday and said his expectation was that tensions would be “closing down sooner rather than later.” Mr. Biden added that “Israel has a right to defend itself, when you have thousands of rockets flying into your territory.”
Officials in several Arab countries, including some that had normalized relations with Israel, criticized its actions. Saudi Arabia, which has not normalized relations with Israel, condemned “in the strongest terms the blatant attacks carried out by the Israeli occupation forces against the sanctity of the Al Aqsa Mosque.”
In Kuwait and Istanbul, there were protests on Tuesday night.
A pro-Palestinian protest on Tuesday in Istanbul. Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
While the immediate triggers for the Palestinian rioting were the Aqsa mosque, the Sheikh Jarrah case and the Gaza conflict, the riots also gave vent to years of pent-up anger from Israel’s Arab minority, which represents about 20 percent of the population.
They have full citizenship and many have become lawmakers, judges and senior civil servants. But rights advocates say they are nevertheless victims of dozens of discriminatory laws, not least a recent law that downgraded the status of the Arabic language and said that only Jews had the right to determine the nature of the Israeli state.
“The way that we are treated is as though we shouldn’t be here,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian political analyst from Haifa, a northern city in Israel, and a former legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization. “We are the people who they mistakenly did not ethnically cleanse from this place.”
In the central city of Lod, the government declared a state of emergency early Wednesday after a synagogue, school and several vehicles were burned by Arab rioters on Monday and Tuesday nights.
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system in Ashkelon, intercepting rockets from Gaza. Dan Balilty for The New York Times
A Palestinian citizen, Moussa Hassouna, was shot dead by a Jewish resident during the disturbances on Monday night, and another wave of unrest followed his funeral 24 hours later.
The Israeli police said that Arab mobs were pulling Jews from their homes and trying to kill them.
“I feel like it’s 100 years ago, and I’m a defenseless Jew in the pogroms,” said Shabtai Pessin, 27, standing in a burned-out classroom at a religious school in Lod. “What’s our sin? Wanting a Jewish state after 2000 years of exile?”
[No, your sin is booting and/or separating Palestinians from their homes and their land. Illegally occupying their land and stealing it. And setting up something akin to the Apartheid regime in S Africa. Which had to eventually fail too. That's some of your sin.]
In the northern city of Acre, a popular Jewish fish restaurant was set on fire,while Arab Bedouins attacked police stations and passing cars in the Negev desert,in southern Israel.
AIn Lod, Arab families feared revenge attacks that summoned up memories of past traumas. Thousands of Palestinians fled their homes there in 1948, never to return.
“I still feel unsure whether I can keep living here,” said Maha Nakib, 50, an administrator and former City Council member in Lod. “I fear they will try to expel us from our homes.”
In the cities of Or Akiva and Beersheva, Jews stoned the cars of people they believed to be Arab. In Tiberias, they threw rocks at hotels housing Arabs, who hurled objects from their windows in return. Cars were set on fire in several towns.
And an Arab mob in Acre ransacked a Jewish-owned hotel.
“It’s happening as we speak,” the hotel’s owner, Evan Fallenberg, said by phone on Wednesday night.
“People are saying this is a rupture that we won’t be able to overcome. I don’t believe that — I know my friendships are lasting ones. But it is going to put everything to the test. We’re headed into something extremely difficult and dangerous, and I don’t know where this is going to end or how.”
Reporting was contributed by Gabby Sobelman from Rehovot, Israel; Irit Pazner Garshowitz and Myra Noveck from Jerusalem; Iyad Abuhweila from Gaza City; Megan Specia from London; and Annie Karni from Washington.
Patrick Kingsley is the Jerusalem bureau chief, covering Israel and the occupied territories. He has reported from more than 40 countries, written two books and previously covered migration and the Middle East for The Guardian. @PatrickKingsley A version of this article appears in print on May 13, 2021, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Mobs in Streets as Israel and Gaza Are Bombarded. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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