Likudniks bash ex-MKs for lobbying against plan,

The first high-level dignitary to visit Jerusalem since establishment of the new government, Maas arrived on Wednesday to try to convince Netanyahu to back down from his plan to begin the process of unilaterally annexing up to 30 % of the West Bank on July 1.

In addition to pressures within the EU – Israel’s biggest trading partner – to adopt punitive measures against Israel if it moves forward with annexation, Maas said that there are steps member states could individually take to downgrade cooperation and trade with Israel. He said the states could also move forward with recognizing a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu told Maas that any peace plan must take Israeli settlements into account. “Any realistic plan must recognize the reality of Israeli settlement in the territory and not nurture the delusion of uprooting people from their homes,” he said.

Israel must have full security control west of the Jordan River, Netanyahu said.

During a press conference with Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi earlier in the day, Maas warned that annexation would be incompatible with international law and make a two-state solution impossible.

“I will continue… to reiterate the German position and explain our serious and honest worries as a very special friend of Israel about the possible consequences of such a move,” he said.

“We share these views with our European partners, and we are of the view that annexation does not go together with international law… We continue to stand for an agreed-upon twostate solution,” Maas said.

Germany will assume the six-month presidency of the European Council and the one-month leadership of the UN Security Council on July 1, the earliest date the coalition agreement between Blue and White and Likud stipulates for a vote on extending sovereignty. Berlin has expressed particular concern at balancing its special ties with Israel with keeping the frameworks of the EU and

international law.

Remarks about annexation by Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz and Ashkenazi were markedly different from Netanyahu’s. US Ambassador David Friedman is expected to try to bridge those gaps in a meeting of all four on Sunday.

In the press conference with Maas, Ashkenazi repeatedly cited the lack of a decision in response to questions about the details of how Israel would implement Trump’s peace plan, saying there is no annexation map yet.

“We are at the beginning of discussions… No decision has been made; it’s a bit early,” he said. “Once a decision has been made, we can give details.”

Gantz and Ashkenazi both called the plan an “opportunity” and emphasized that it should be implemented “responsibly” in dialogue with the US.

“The plan will be pursued responsibly, in full coordination with the US, while maintaining Israel’s peace agreements and strategic interests,” Ashkenazi said. “We intend to do it in a dialogue with our neighbors. Israel wants peace and security.”

Regarding European and specifically German concerns over annexation, Ashkenazi said: “As one of our closest friends, it is important to listen to your perspective and to take it into consideration.”

Asked about the status of Palestinians if Israel proceeds with annexation, he said: “The plan defines the status of the residents. The plan stipulates that Israelis remain Israeli and Palestinians remain under the Palestinian Authority until an eventual state is established. The Trump administration’s “Vision for Peace” would create Palestinian enclaves within sovereign Israel and Israeli enclaves within an eventual Palestinian state rather than have each side accept the other as citizens.

Ashkenazi also called for Germany to wait for the Israeli decision before responding to the possibility of annexation.

He and Maas “did not discuss possible steps Germany will take” in response to annexation, he said.

All three of Maas’s Israeli interlocutors impressed upon him the importance of putting pressure on Iran.

They discussed Iran’s further violations of the nuclear deal with world powers, with Gantz urging Maas to be active against Iranian aggression in the EU and UNSC.

“There must be an assertive policy to ensure necessary inspections that will prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons that will endanger the whole world,” Gantz said.

In a report last weekend, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran refused to grant inspectors access to undeclared military nuclear sites and posited that those sites may have been used for storing or processing nuclear material.

In response to a question at the press conference with Ashkenazi, Maas said Germany is aware of and disturbed by Iran’s violations, and it plans to invoke the agreement’s Dispute Resolution Mechanism in light of the latest revelations.

Iran is the biggest threat to regional stability, Ashkenazi said.

“Their nuclear program and regional ambitions remain a great concern,” he said. “We will not allow Iran to have nuclear weapons, and we will not allow Iranian entrenchment on our borders. The international community must hold Iran accountable and act strongly against Iran’s malign activities.”

At the beginning of their press conference, Maas and Ashkenazi signed an agreement for German funding of Yad Vashem over the next 10 legislative, executive and judiciary bodies all at the same time. This must end. The only way to do so is through the Supreme Court override bill. If the High Court does not recognize its own limitations, the Knesset will have to clarify them.”

MK Michal Shir (Likud) immediately filed an amended bill to legalize unauthorized settlement homes. Settlements Minister Tzipi Hotovely held an emergency forum with legal experts on legislative alternatives to the Settlements Law.

“This government has a responsibility to strengthen the settlements and to find alternative legislation that would authorize thousands of homes, so that the settlements are not harmed by the court’s decision,” Hotovely said.

In contrast, Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi tweeted about the need to respect the court.

“We respect the High Court’s decision on the [Settlements] law. The High Court has the full authority to examine legislation in the State of Israel. We will ensure that every decision of the High Court is respected, and we will not allow the rule of law to be harmed,” he said.

Smotrich said it was no accident that the court had issued its ruling now that a new government was formed, which was unlikely to toe the same judicial policy line with regard to unauthorized settlement construction.

“The strongest political body in the country [the HCJ] was waiting for a more lax government that would not move on the Supreme Court Override Bill and would continue with extreme left-wing” rulings, he said.

“For years, the so-called High Court has trampled over citizen’s rights, and has distorted the Knesset’s laws so that they conform to a progressive and post-Zionist agenda that always favors enemy’s civil rights over its state’s own citizens,” Smotrich said.

In a warning to the court, he said, “Know that all dictatorships will fall. Sooner or later the people will rise, the Knesset will legislate, control will be returned to the people and the Israeli public will free themselves from the violent strangulation.”

Shir said the “proximity” of the court ruling “to the pending plan to apply sovereignty was not accidental.”

Economy Minister Amir Peretz (Labor) called on all politicians to respect the court’s decision that what was illegal could not be legalized.

He added that the court decision was a statement against pending Israeli annexation plans. “The other conclusion is that everything should be done to avoid unilateral steps and unilateral annexation,” Peretz tweeted.

Some of the 13 NGOs that filed the petition to the court against the Settlements Law issued a statement noting that judges had stated the obvious, “thou shall not steal.” This included the left-wing Israeli NGOs Yesh Din, Peace Now and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

The law was “a black mark on the Israeli Knesset and on Israeli democracy and the High Court of Justice,” which the statement said “retroactively legalizes thievery and allows systematic plundering of land.”

The NGOs continued: “We have curbed this unsuccessful attempt to expropriate private land of people, living under occupation by a government they did not choose, for the benefit of new settlements aimed at fragmenting the West Bank.”

The groups said that the decision “raises a red flag to protagonists of annexation. Let it be clear: If the government of Israel goes ahead with its plan to annex, it will implement the harsh damages the HCJ sought to prevent by revoking this bill.”

Joint List MK Ayman Odeh said the ruling was an important victory against land theft, but it had little practical meaning as long as Israel continued its “occupation” of the West Bank as well its preparations for annexation of portions of it.

“It is like forbidding the bank robbers from only stealing the

Youth Council has called on the Education Ministry to “stop confusing the students” and to issue clear guidelines on how students in grades 11 and 12 should study and prepare for their matriculation exams in the shadow of coronavirus.

“In recent days, a number of inquiries have come to us regarding the difficulty created by the coronavirus crisis,” the council said in a statement, highlighting students who were forced into isolation or schools that were closed, thereby leaving them no teacher to help them study for their exams.

Known as the “Bagrut,” Israeli matriculation exams are used for assessing the knowledge of students on subjects covered in high school and can impact their placement in the IDF and then college.

Council chairman Nimrod Peperni noted that it was also brought to the council’s attention that some students were being penalized for not attending school after the Education Ministry said that attendance was voluntary during the coronavirus crisis. He said that students’ grades were being impacted by their failure to attend, including those who are afraid of becoming infected and those who cannot come because they or someone in their family is high-risk.

At the same time, it is still unclear when the school year will end for children in younger grades, as Teachers’ Association chairman Ran Erez has still not signed an agreement to add nine days to the school year to make up for some of the school days lost to the first coronavirus peak. Because he has not signed, neither will Yaffa Ben-David, the head of the Israeli Teachers Union, who is responsible for extending elementary schools.

Erez has reportedly committed verbally, but only next week are the two expected to meet and finalize the decision. If they sign, school will end on July 13.

Already, the National Security Council is planning for what schools and the rest of Israel will look like in the fall and winter, when many health experts have predicted Israel will see a second wave alongside seasonal flu.

Plexiglass between student desks and rapid epidemiological tracking are just two of the efforts that are being considered, according to a plan prepared by the National Security Council.

The document, which was obtained by the Hebrew website N12, outlines various steps that would need to be taken in preparation for a second wave.

According to N12, the plan includes increasing the country’s ability to track where sick people have been and with whom they have interacted in order to quickly stop the infection chain. It also addresses at-risk populations, such as the elderly, and discusses the need to continually review the situation through the Health Ministry’s Magen Avot v’Imahot (Guarding Fathers and Mothers) program.

The Bedouin and foreign workers communities are specifically highlighted as needing extra attention since they have had high infection rates.

Regarding the education system, it calls on schools and the Education Ministry to begin preparing for the school year that opens September 2020 and raises the idea of Plexiglas partitions between student desks.

N12 said that the document also highlights the need for continued dialogue with countries that are leading the fight against the virus and learning from them about how they face various challenges of returning to routine. On Wednesday, Netanyahu spoke to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and again discussed the potential areas in which India and Israel could expand their cooperation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, including research and development efforts in the fields of vaccines, therapeutics feeling it was finally safe to rule without losing its judicial-review power.

This still does not explain why the High Court ruled now as opposed to a few months down the road.

Here, the timing could be tied to the ICC Pretrial Chamber. It is in the process of deciding whether to endorse ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s request to open a full criminal war-crimes probe against Israel and Hamas.

The High Court’s decision to beat back the retroactive legalization of 4,000 outposts could significantly boost its credibility and perceived independence globally.

This could encourage the ICC to leave judging disputes over the settlement enterprise and Operation Protective Edge (the Israel-Gaza conflict in 2014) to Israel’s justice system. This is because under the ICC’s Rome Statute, the ICC cannot get involved with a country that investigates its own alleged war crimes.

Even as the High Court justices are committed to issuing rulings primarily based on Israeli law, they do keep a close eye on ICC developments, people familiar with the matter told The Jerusalem Post.

How interested is the ICC in our High Court’s rulings?

Instances in which the High Court has approved specific settlements as legal could provide a complete defense to any allegations that they are war crimes, former ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo told the Post in December 2015.

The Palestinian Authority was furious with Moreno Ocampo, and Bensouda may not agree with him, but the ICC Pretrial Chamber may not have made up its mind.

More specifically, on May 27, the Pretrial Chamber requested that all key parties clarify the status of the Oslo Accords and their impact on the war-crimes probe.

First, the ICC asked the PA to explain whether the Oslo Accords still apply in the warcrimes case it is assessing. It wanted clarification on this issue, following PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s May 19 declaration that, in frustration with Israeli noises about making a West Bank annexation move, the PA no longer viewed itself as bound by the Oslo Accords.

Since the Pretrial Chamber asked for these explanations, both the PA and Bensouda have responded.

The remaining question is whether Israel will reply at all, and if it does, what position it will take.

Israel has until June 24 to reply. But it may choose not to reply so as not to show recognition of the ICC’s jurisdiction and in light of a large volume of legal briefs that countries that are parties to the ICC have filed on its behalf.

These countries have already argued the legal point that the Oslo Accords do not allow the PA to seek international legal intervention regarding alleged crimes from a body like the ICC.

But one takeaway from the ICC judges publicly asking for additional clarifications is that they are seriously struggling with the issues and are considering overturning Bensouda’s wish to move forward with probing Israel.

The headline of the current debate before the High Court is deciding whether a State of Palestine exists, which can grant it basic jurisdiction over alleged Israeli war crimes.

Yet another massive issue is whether the ICC believes Israel’s court system is independent enough to probe potential illegalities.

In legal briefs in both December 2018 and December 2019, Bensouda tried to push Israel’s High Court out of the game by saying it had declined to rule on whether the settlement policy is a judicial issue.

While recognizing that the High Court has already ruled on some settlements, Bensouda’s reports set up a scenario in which they could declare the settlement enterprise as a war crime and only drop certain settlements from the probe if the High Court were to deal with them.

In addition, Bensouda’s reports generally ignored a May 2018 High Court ruling that the IDF’s rules of engagement during the 2018-2019 Gaza border conflict were legal. This once again suggested that Bensouda’s view likely is that High Court rulings will not provide Israel much of a defense.

But the ICC Pretrial Chamber may agree with Moreno-Ocampo, and a big and independent decision like Tuesday’s on the settlements may be exactly what convinces the judges of Israel’s argument.

Finally, the High Court may have issued this ruling now as a warning shot to Netanyahu’s annexation plans.

It is highly doubtful that the High Court could block a fullfledged annexation move by the government.

But the way the High Court approaches the issue in terms of urging taking into account Palestinian rights has unmistakable implications for whether annexation should be done unilaterally or as part of increase, we think that our story will become more and more relevant in other places. Potentially, what we learn here