UPDATES
9:00 am Israel time, Tuesday, March 10 2015
7 Days Until The Election
**The biggest election news of the day is the Jerusalem Post story that Haneen Zoabi, the Israeli-Arab ultra leftist member of the United Arab List that most Israelis revile as a terrorist, has decided that she will recommend to President Rivlin that Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni form the next government in Israel.
To be more specific, she will recommend this to Rivlin; however, she adamantly rejects any thought of the Arab List joining a Herzog coalition.
The Post presents this information today with the comment that this will undoubtedly help Herzog get the nod from Rivlin to form a coalition. That may be so, but your humble servant still cannot see how Herzog can make it to the magic 61 seats to become Prime Minister.
The latest polls have the Leftist block at 56 seats–and this 56 seats includes the 13 likely seats of the Arab List. If the Arab List refuses to join a Herzog Coalition, then Herzog is left with only 43 seats. If by some prestidigitation the Arab List decides to join the coalition, then certain parties such as Koolanu have indicated they will definitely not. Either way, Herzog can’t make the magic number.
But as we all know, politics makes strange bedfellows, and Israeli politics makes extremely strange ones.
By the way, according to another poll out yesterday, 19% of the Israeli voting public remains undecided about whom to vote for. Two-thirds of this 19% are women.
**The fallout over Yair Gerboz’s racist diatribe against Israel’s influential Sephardic community has only intensified since yesterday. As you will recall, Gerboz called the religious Sephardis “amulet-kissers, idol worshipers, bowers at the graves of saints, thieves, and bribe takers” at the Leftist rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday night.
Every politician on the right has pounced on his statement, and even some on the Left have condemned it.
But strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, Herzog and Livni remain silent.
Meanwhile, Herzog and Livni have put the following campaign “signs” on some university campuses here:
Do you want to be the new terrorist and murderer Che Guevara? Put your head into the hole and take a selfie of yourself–and, oh by the way, vote for Herzog and Livni!
**Great news!
According to pre-eminent anti-Israel basher and outgoing UN envoy to the Middle East Robert Serry, and the Swiss ambassador to the PLO, Paul Granier, Hamas is willing to lay down its arms and stop building tunnels and sign a 5 to 15 year hudna with Israel.
All Israel has to do in return is open all borders into and out of Gaza and remove all restrictions on travel, exports, and imports.
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Wow! Hamas terrorists will be able to come and go at will; Iranian weapons will be able to flow into Gaza by land, air, and sea; and Hamas factories will even be able to export missiles and ammunition around the world.
What a deal!
By the way, Hamas repeated its threat yesterday to kidnap Israeli soldiers in the near future.
TODAY’S BLOG:
Speaking of Hamas . . .
The last 48 hours have seen the PLO and the IDF working in tandem to carry out numerous arrests of Hamas supporters in Judea and Samaria. Apparently, between 100 and 200 Hamas members are now behind bars.
But these are not just your standard Hamas terrorists.
Some of those rounded up include poet Abdel Shafi Al-Dakhla, writer Salah Hamida, as well as various sheikhs, imams, and “intellectuals” in Jenin and Bethlehem. Not that all of these people do not incite hatred and terrorism, but still, their arrests mark a departure in that they are not “ticking” bombs who are planning attacks and/or are on the verge of carrying out attacks against Israelis.
These arrests are less about protecting Israel and more about protecting Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO. Ismail al-Ashqar, a Hamas leader in Gaza, had this to say this morning: “The security coordination between Fatah (the PLO) and the Zionist Occupation (Israel) is national treason.”
It is a further indication of how the situation between the PLO and Hamas has deteriorated.
Just two weeks ago, Hamas carried out mass arrests of Fatah operatives in Gaza, and these arrests follow a number of assassinations and assassination attempts directed at the PLO in Gaza.
So why is Israel working with the PLO?
Obviously because it considers the PLO the lesser of two evils. But more than this, Israel has come to the point that it heavily counts on PLO security cooperation in Judea and Samaria in terms of stopping major terror threats against Israelis (even though the PLO does nothing to help stop the daily “rock” and Molotov cocktail assaults on residents of the area).
To this end, Israel has a major interest in keeping Mahmoud Abbas in power despite the fact that Abbas is leading the charge against Israel in the international arena.
As was said before, Israel is a place of very strange bedfellows.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.