Netanyahu: We are still working on sovereignty
Palestinians offer peace talks mediated by UN, but only if Israel gives up all West Bank sovereignty plans
A day before the earliest date the government can move to apply Israeli sovereignty in parts of the West Bank, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized the matter is still on the agenda.
Following a meeting with US special envoy for international negotiations Avi Berkowitz and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman on Tuesday, Netanyahu said: “We talked about the question of sovereignty that we are working on in these days, and we will continue to work on in the coming days.”
No sovereignty moves are expected to take place on Wednesday, despite the coalition agreement allowing Netanyahu to bring it to a cabinet vote starting July 1. But the prime minister reportedly took a major step, showing his proposal for where Israel would apply its civil law.
The new map, as reported by KAN, would remove the problem of Israeli enclaves within Palestinian territory by broadening the areas of Israeli sovereignty around them and making the parts of the West Bank that would be under Israeli sovereignty more contiguous. It would also include some outposts.
In order to maintain the 30%-70% proportion of Israeli and Palestinian parts of the West Bank, Israel would give up on unpopulated strips of land that were supposed to be under its sovereignty, including part of the Judean Desert.
Netanyahu also reportedly said any extension of sovereignty at this time must include Beit El and Shiloh, both biblical cities that are not in the major settlement blocs that Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz agreed to bring under Israeli law.
The Americans have asked Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians at the same time it makes any sovereignty moves. One possibility is giving them control of parts of Area C of the West Bank – currently governed by the IDF – in proportion to wherever
Israel applies its civil laws, Channel 12 reported. Area C is 60% of the West Bank, and the Trump peace plan would allow Israel to apply sovereignty to half of it.
The White House said it could not confirm any of those details, and the Prime Minister’s Office did not
respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu kept up public sparring with Gantz on the topic. Gantz reiterated that dealing with the health and economic crises caused by the coronavirus must come first, telling Ynet: “A million unemployed people don’t know what we’re talking about... they’re worried about what they’ll do tomorrow morning.”
In a meeting with US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook, Netanyahu made a dig at Gantz, saying: “We have very important topics to discuss, even ones that can’t wait until after corona.”
Netanyahu’s allies went further. Asked if the prime minister would go to an election if sovereignty does not happen, coalition chairman Miki Zohar responded: “In my estimation, the matter of sovereignty is critical for the prime minister.”
Transportation Minister Miri Regev said sarcastically in a Channel 13 interview: “Gantz didn’t know about sovereignty.” The same channel reported a source close to Netanyahu said that if “Gantz sabotages sovereignty, there will be a painful response.”
According to the coalition agreement, Netanyahu can bring sovereignty to a vote in the Knesset or the cabinet beginning July 1 even if Gantz does not agree to it.
Also Tuesday, Palestinian officials said they are prepared to resume peace negotiations with Israel only after it cancels its plan to apply sovereignty to parts of the West Bank.
Peace talks should be held only through an international peace conference and under the auspices of the UN, the officials told The Jerusalem Post.
Several Palestinian factions, meanwhile, called for protests in the West Bank on Wednesday against the Israeli plan. The factions urged Palestinians to clash with soldiers as part of a “day of rage” in protest against the annexation plan.
“The Palestinian position remains unchanged and firm,” one official told the Post. “We are calling for an international conference under the umbrella of the UN and with wide participation of international parties on the basis of international legitimacy and the [2002] Arab Peace Initiative.”
The official said it is “premature” to talk about the resumption of any peace process as long as Israel proceeds with its plan to extend its sovereignty to parts of the West Bank.
The Palestinian leadership remains committed at this phase to PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s May 18 decision to renounce all agreements and understandings with Israel and the US administration, another Palestinian official told the Post.
“The US administration has disqualified itself from playing any role in the Middle East peace process because of its blind bias in favor of Israel,” the official said. “That’s why we are now insisting that the UN and other international parties and countries increase their role in the conflict. Our goal is to end US hegemony over the peace process.”
Palestinian officials on Tuesday stepped up their efforts to prevent Israel from carrying out its annexation plan.
In a series of meetings in Ramallah with foreign diplomats, they warned of the “dangers” and “grave repercussions” of the Israeli plan and called on the international community to pressure Israel to backtrack.
In a related development, a PA official confirmed that the Palestinians have offered to resume peace negotiations with Israel.
The offer was included in a letter the Palestinians sent in early June to the Quartet, which consists of the US, UN, EU and Russia, the official said.
The official, who was responding to a Monday dispatch by AFP, said PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh had talked about the letter to the Quartet during a meeting with the Foreign Press Association on June 9.
At the meeting, Shtayyeh revealed that the Palestinians presented a counteroffer to US President Donald Trump’s plan for Middle East peace, also known as the “Deal of the Century.”
The counteroffer calls for the establishment of an independent, sovereign and demilitarized Palestinian state, Shtayyeh said.
The Palestinian plan also talks about the possibility of “minor border changes” between the future Palestinian state and Israel, he said, without mentioning the Palestinians’ readiness for bilateral talks with Israel. •
did not link sovereignty to US approval, Elhayani said. In September, Netanyahu promised Jordan Valley sovereignty immediately upon formation of a new government, he said.
At the time, Netanyahu would have already known about the Trump plan, but he made the pledge anyway, Elhayani said.
Linking US approval to sovereignty now is a form of backtracking on that pledge, he added.
“I have to ask, has he played us? Did he use the Jordan Valley for his own electoral purposes?” pondered Elhayani, who actively campaigned for Netanyahu after his dramatic announcement. “We are calling on Netanyahu to keep his promise. Leaders make good on their promises. It’s enough with the excuses.”
“Netanyahu has wide Knesset support, even from the opposition, so why the hesitation, I don’t understand it,” he said.
“I expect Netanyahu to bring sovereignty to a vote in the government already this Sunday, otherwise it is a historic opportunity that will be missed,” Elhayani said.
As the head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, Elhayani has been on the ground floor of the annexation process from the start.
When talk first surfaced about a real annexation possibility, it was a Jordan Valley-first plan.
The issue began in earnest in June 2019 when Netanyahu visited the area together with former US national security adviser John Bolton, Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Elhayani recalled.
“Ron whispered to me, ‘David you should know you can thank the prime minister; he has watched over the Jordan Valley,” he said.
So it was clear that something was happening behind the scenes, Elhayani said. In September, there was an announcement of the Jordan Valley and Northern Dead Sea sovereignty plan, with a pledge to annex all the settlements later. That was followed by a push in January for an application of sovereignty over all the settlements.
Netanyahu then held back first for the unveiling of the Trump plan, a week later at the end of January. Then Netanyahu held off again so that he could have US support following completion of the work of a joint US-Israeli mapping committee tasked with setting the contours of annexation.
Elhayani was one of four settler leaders who was in Washington for the unveiling of the plan. He is among those who opposed the plan. At issue for him is that he feels it is a blueprint for the creation of a Palestinian state. He also fears the plan would allow for a de facto settlement freeze and would lead to the destruction of at least 15 settlements.
Elhayani has therefore led a campaign to pressure Netanyahu to apply sovereignty to all the West Bank settlements outside the contours of the Trump peace plan.
The time is ripe for such an act now, when the international community is distracted by COVID-19 and the US elections are not so far in advance, Elhyahi said. •
Ambassador David Friedman and Special Envoy Avi Berkowitz and said annexation was not important for Israel and could wait. Netanyahu responded that afternoon, saying that Gantz has no influence over annexation, “not one way or another.”
Is this how a unity government makes a decision of such strategic proportions?
The truth is that the writing had been on the wall since January, ahead of the unveiling of US President Donald Trump’s peace plan. Then, Netanyahu – facing a third election– announced his intention to annex parts of the West Bank immediately after the rollout of the plan.
When that didn’t happen – at the time, the White House hit the brakes and said it first wanted a stable government in Jerusalem – Netanyahu waited. He made annexation one of the centerpieces of his campaign in the March election but also when it was over, using it to explain to the public why he needed to remain prime minister.
When the Netanyahu-Gantz government was formed in May, the prime minister again spoke about how annexation would come soon, putting July 1 in the coalition agreement as the date for it to begin.
The problem is that in the five months since the plan was rolled out in Washington, and the two months since the coalition was formed, the government has yet to hold even one serious in-depth discussion about what is going to happen.
Gantz and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi are said to have seen a number of maps without being told which one Netanyahu is planning to adopt, not to mention members of the Likud Party, who have no idea what is happening behind closed doors.
Is this the way a government is meant to function? Is this the way we want our leaders determining issues that strike at the core of the country’s existence?
Of course not. This criticism has nothing to do with the legitimacy of applying Israeli law to parts of the Jewish people’s homeland. What it has to do with is proper governance and how a prime minister and his ministers are meant to make decisions with historic ramifications.
People can argue about annexation, but at least have a process that does it justice. •
At the same time, more than 30 students and five teachers who work at a school in Ashdod have tested positive for the virus, as has Tel Aviv Magistrate Court Judge Dan Sa’adon.
The Israel Court Spokesperson’s Unit released a statement, explaining that all those who had been to the court since June 21 were required to contact the Health Ministry and await further instructions.
Edelstein said during the Post conference that in his first two weeks in his new role – a role he said he chose – he held several meetings within the ministry and with other healthcare professionals that led him to believe “there was no serious explanation why” the number of people screened for coronavirus per day could not be increased.
Since then, he stepped up daily testing, screening an average of 17,000 people per day – up from less than 10,000 during the peak of the crisis by expanding the criteria for those who can be tested.
Additionally, the ministry hired some 280 more medical students and paramedics to work in the Public Health Department and carry out epidemiological investigations of coronavirus patients to help break the chain of infection. But Edelstein cautioned that “if the numbers grow [too high], we cannot cut the chain, [and] then a closure is a possibility.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also spoke on Tuesday at the changing-of-theguard ceremony for the director-general of the Education Ministry.
“I held several consultations with the minister of health and with the National Security Council because the virus is spreading,” he said. “We see it in the world. It is spreading worldwide and, unfortunately, in Israel, too. We are calling for action: On the one hand, to stop its spread, and on the other, to allow economic activity, which I discuss with the finance minister several times per day.”
His statements came a day after the government approved a list of new restrictions.
Effective immediately, weddings and bar/bat mitzvahs (or similar religious events) will be limited to 250 people. All other events, including circumcision ceremonies and communal prayer, will be capped at 50 people.
After July 10 and until at least July 31, weddings and bar/ bat mitzvahs that take place indoors shall be limited to no more than 50% of the capacity of the venue, with no more than 100 people in attendance. Events in open spaces can continue to have 250 guests. •
At the time, Netanyahu lashed out at the prior committee, saying it was not letting him have the same rights as previous ministers who received donations to pay for their defense in public corruption cases. He also claimed the committee had politicized the process and usurped or manufactured new authorities to block his rights, which it did not legally have.
The previous committee responded quickly, saying Netanyahu was unique because he is a serving prime minister. It said all prior cases he wanted to cite to prove he was being mistreated were related to former ministers who resigned their posts once they got into legal trouble. Once those ministers resigned their posts, they no longer had ongoing or current conflicts of interest to receive donations, the committee said.
In other words, the committee implied that Netanyahu can get his legal bills paid for if he resigns, but he must pay if he wants to stay in office. The implication is that he can help the tycoons in return for their money, and allegedly he has in the past.
Part of the dispute between Netanyahu and the previous committee was the prime minister’s refusal to fully reveal his financial situation and ability to self-fund his defense.
But by July 2019, Englman, viewed as close to Netanyahu, had replaced former comptroller Joseph Shapira. Shortly after that, Englman replaced the comptroller committee as well.
Significant media coverage has shown connections between new committee members and the Likud, with some new members even resigning but most weathering the criticism. Englman has rejected any notion that he or the committee favor Netanyahu.
The new committee said it was not bound by the previous three rulings of the same committee because it is an administrative panel and not a court.
The new committee said circumstances have substantially changed since June 2019, namely, in November 2019, the indictment against Netanyahu was filed, and he must now imminently pay to defend himself at trial in a case that has more than 1,000 binders of evidence.
In an earlier exchange about his finances, after Netanyahu accused the previous committee of holding his legal defense hostage, the committee responded by publicizing investment links he had to tycoon and cousin Natan Milikovsky, which have raised the specter of a potential new criminal probe.
The committee also previously told the prime minister to return to donors $300,000 he had received without the committee’s approval. • where he spoke about his life and career.
Born in the Bronx in 1922, Reiner was already dabbling in acting workshops run by the Works Progress Administration before he was drafted into the US Air Force during World War II. He eventually served in a performing arts troupe in the military.
After the war, he performed in Broadway shows and became a sketch comedian and writer on two television shows with Sid Caesar, Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour. These programs drew an incredibly talented writing staff, and Reiner worked alongside such up-and-comers as Brooks and Neil Simon. He and Brooks became lifelong friends and sometime collaborators, teaming up for the two-man comedy sketch “The 2000 Year Old Man,” in which Reiner was the straight man to Brooks’ Yiddish-accented oldest living human. The two started improvising this skit at parties and went on to perform this constantly changing and expanding routine on television and on stage. It was captured in five comedy albums, one of which won a Grammy, and a 1975 animated television special. This routine was always laced with Jewish humor.
“I have 1500 children and not one of them ever comes to visit!” Brooks lamented frequently. When Reiner asked him for the first book he ever read, Brooks answered in Yiddish, then translated the title to “See Moses Run.” American audiences lapped it all up, including the Yiddishisms.
In 1961, Reiner created the hugely successful and influential series, The Dick Van Dyke Show, which focused on a comedy writer, his co-workers and his family (his wife was played by Mary Tyler Moore in her breakthrough performance), which is considered by many to be the greatest sitcom of all time. The show featured a Jewish character, Buddy Sorrell, played by Morey Amsterdam, who was one of the writers on the show-within-a-show, and he cracked many Yiddish and Jewish jokes. The Jewish side of the show culminated in a remarkable 1966 episode, “Buddy Sorrell, Man and Boy,” in which Buddy is sneaking around and Van Dyke thinks he is cheating on his wife, but it turns out he is meeting a rabbi to study for his bar mitzvah. The episode ends with nearly five minutes showing the bar mitzvah, an extraordinary display of Yiddishkeit on US network television over 60 years ago.
Reiner himself appeared in a recurring role on the show as Van Dyke’s boss, the tyrannical comedian Alan Brady, who was said to have been based on Caesar.
Reiner went on to produce and direct several other iterations of the Dick Van Dyke Show, as well as other series and movies.
One of his biggest hit movies was the 1977 Oh, God! starring George Burns, another Jewish comedian.
Reiner also collaborated with Steve Martin on several popular comedy films, including All of Me, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid and The Jerk.
He continued to act throughout his life, and younger audiences may know him best as Saul Bloom in the Ocean’s Eleven series. In 2019, he voiced the character of Carl Reineroceros in Toy Story 4.
A day before his death, he tweeted, “Nothing pleases me more than knowing that I have lived the best life possible by having met & marrying the gifted Estelle (Stella) Lebost – who partnered with me in bringing Rob, Annie & Lucas Reiner into to this needy & evolving world.” •