25 Av 5780
15 August 2020
The News on the Israeli Street
The daily Corona (Covid 19) update as of 8 am this morning:
There are 90,472 confirmed cases—an increase of 650 since this time yesterday
66,151 of these confirmed cases have recovered—an increase of 1,405
377 are in critical condition–an increase of 6
110 of the most critically ill are on ventilators—the same as yesterday
657 have died–an increase of 6
There are 24,321 active cases.
Please note that the relatively low number of newly confirmed cases is partly because very little testing goes on in Israel on Friday and Saturday.
Palestinian terror in the last 24 hours . . .
A tired firefighter attempts to put out a fire sweeping through the Bari Forest yesterday.
*Explosive balloons launched from Gaza ignited 23 fires along the border in southern Israel yesterday, bringing to more than 150 the number of fires this week.
The worst fires yesterday were in the Sdot Negev Regional Council where neighborhoods had to be evacuated because of approaching fires, Moshav Mivtachim, and the Eshkol Region in general.
*Palestinian snipers in Gaza shot down an IDF drone.
*Palestinian terrorists opened fire on Israelis yesterday along Road 60. No Israelis were wounded, and the terrorists escaped.
Palestinian reaction to the agreement with the United Arab Emirates . . .
Click here to see Palestinians on the Temple Mount stepping on the flag of the UAE and the face of its leader Mohammed Bin Zayed. and here for how the Israeli police swooped in to stop what was going on.
Needless to say, the Palestinian reaction has been one of outrage with phrases like “stabbed in the back” and “betrayal” being ranted about.
Also needless to say, the Palestinians are being supported in their condemnations of the UAE by Iran and Turkey.
On the other hand . . .
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Egypt, Oman, and Bahrain have expressed support for the UAE. There’s every reason to believe that both Oman and Bahrain will soon join the UAE in signing agreements with Israel.
Jordan, unsurprisingly, is not taking sides with its Foreign Minister Ayman Safdi offering this delusional statement: “If Israel sees this agreement as an incentive to return to the 1967 borders, the region will move towards peace.”
As we all know, Israel will never return to the June 4, 1967 lines (aka the 1949 Armistice Lines).
Speaking of delusional . . .
It is fair to say that a major player in the Israel-UAE agreement is Jared Kushner.
Here is an excerpt from a conversation that he had with journalists yesterday concerning how he sees the Agreement impacting the Muslim world:
“We call this the Abraham Accords. You have a lot of people who want to be able to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. And they can now take flights from Abu Dhabi or Dubai to Israel to do so. This will show the Muslim world that the Mosque is open and welcome for all people to pray. That’s a narrative that a lot of the extremists and Iranians have tried to push that they need to cause instability so that they can save the Mosque. The Mosque is available for people to go visit.”
As we all know, millions of Muslims already pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque each year which is “open and welcome” for all Muslims to come and pray (the Islamic Wakf will never open it to non-Muslims). These Muslims come from all over the Muslim world including Turkey which has its PM Erdogan still proclaiming that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is the next mosque that will be liberated (after the Hagi Sophia Church in Istanbul was turned into a mosque last month).
If Kushner thinks for a moment that the narrative of extremists like the Turks and Iranians is going to change because of the agreement with the UAE, he is completely delusional.
TODAY’S BLOG:
Netanyahu’s Faustian Bargain (Part 2)
There is a real sense among Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria this morning that they and those of us who support them have been played.
Did Netanyahu ever really mean to declare sovereignty in those communities or was he merely threatening to in order to push the process with the UAE along and then reap the political benefits of being a peacemaker when he called off the sovereignty push?
This may seem like a cynical analysis until you think the history of Netanyahu.
Here is a man who in his first stint at prime minister apparently responded positively to President Clinton’s attempt in 1997 to start negotiations that would have ended with Israel handing over the Golan to the Syrians.
And then in 2010 at the outset of his second stint as prime minister, Netanyahu began secret contacts with the Syrians based on an outline given to him by President Obama. That outline called for Israel to return to the pre-1967 borders on the Golan, thereby turning over the entire area–all the way down to the eastern shore of the Kineret (Sea of Galilee)–to the Syrians. In return, Israel would supposedly have gotten full diplomatic relations and an end to the neverending state of war declared by Syria. All of this was reported in the Yedioth Aharanot newspaper at the time and never denied by Netanyahu.
Thankfully, the Syrian Civil War intervened and this foolhardy plan was scrapped.
What about from 2012 until now?
As we have fully documented on OneIsrael, we have seen one promise after another broken by Netanyahu concerning Judea and Samaria. Whether they were promises to carry out new construction in Jewish communities or promises to raze illegal Palestinian construction (such as Khan Al-Ahmar), they were broken one by one. As we have pointed out time and again, Netanyahu’s modus operandi has been to make promises of all sorts during election campaigns and then to freeze and trash them after being elected.
What Netanyahu has been wedded to is a status quo that is not a status quo. On the one hand, fledgling Jewish communities are razed time and again in Area C while fledgling Palestinian communities are left untouched–a process that has accelerated in recent months as the Palestinians and their friends in the European Union have gone on a building spree in Area C.
Therein lies the problem. By not declaring sovereignty over parts of Area C yet allowing the Palestinians to proceed to swallow up land there as if Israel were going to, Netanyahu is fundamentally changing large swathes of Area C into part of a nascent Palestinian state.
As we stated in yesterday’s blog, the agreement with the UAE is not “peace for peace”; it is most assuredly “land for peace.”
What is there left to say?
Netanyahu has been led by yet another U.S. president down the primrose path producing a momentary burst of diplomatic and media excitement. It was excitement enough to take the media’s eye off the daily demonstrations in Israel and the United States, and excitement enough to get people’s mind off of Corona for a day or two.
It has been suggested that this will go down as the “greatest foreign policy accomplishment” of Netanyahu’s long career because he was able to get the UAE to sign on without making major concessions to the Palestinians. As we have already stated, this is absolutely false; stopping sovereignty is a major concession to the Palestinians.
Israeli Minister Yuval Steinitz grandiosely commented yesterday that the Agreement “is a historic event here that will serve the State of Israel for generations.” That remains to be seen.
As we all know, the devil is in the details, and one can only wonder what PM Netanyahu has actually agreed to in the Agreement with the UAE. One thing to look for will be how the subject of the “1967 lines” is mentioned; another will be how “Jerusalem” is handled. It is hard to believe that the Emiratis would agree to pour billions of dollars of “investment” into Israel without major pro-Palestinian statements on both.
Finally, on the subject of Emirati investment, do we really want to put the UAE in the position of holding sizeable stakes in Israeli companies? Have we so quickly forgotten what happened when the Chinese took over companies like Tnuva?
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.