‘ More peace agreements to be delivered shortly’
US President Donald Trump voiced optimism that more peace agreements to normalize ties between Israel and Arab countries are possible when he addressed the opening session of the 75th UN General Assembly.
Trump’s speech was mostly focused on the pandemic, and he sharply criticized China for its response to the virus. “We must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world –
China,” he said. “In the earliest days of the virus, China locked down travel domestically while allowing flights to leave China.”
“We are mass producing [ vaccines] in advance so they can be delivered immediately upon arrival; we will distribute a vaccine,” Trump said. “We will defeat the virus.”
The US president addressed the recent agreements that the White House brokered, such as the economic agreement between Serbia and Kosovo, and the historic Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Trump said that there are “many other Middle Eastern countries to come.”
“They are coming fast, and they know it’s great for them, and it’s great for the world,”
meeting.
“It is clear that there cannot be a situation where the government ministers request to present the legal opinion of the attorney- general as merely one among many, with government officials free to choose among them, whatever is best in their eyes,” Mandelblit said.
“Since this is clearly the purpose underlying the request of the public security minister in inviting Prof. Bakshi to the ministerial committee meeting,” Bakshi’s participation could lead to “an illegal decision,” he said.
The idea that government ministers could just swap official authorized professionals anytime they did not like their advice “would significantly undermine the foundations of a properly operating government,” Mandelblit said.
“No one would imagine bringing an outside military expert to stand in for the position of the IDF chief of staff, the Shin Bet director” or any other such major official, he wrote.
The High Court of Justice has made it clear that the attorneygeneral’s rulings are binding, but it was not that there could not be other voices on any given issue, Mandelblit said.
He invited Bakshi to present his position to the staff of the Attorney- General’s Office. Mandelblit pledged that if the ministers wanted, he would present both Bakshi’s views and his office’s critique of those views.
Mandelblit did not stand alone. Blue and White refused to start the meeting until the Likud backed down from bringing Bakshi into the cabinet’s meeting area.
Responding to Mandelblit and Blue and White, Ohana said: “The Blue and White Party is serving Mandelblit instead of the public. In light of the attorney- general’s statements that MKs and ministers are not allowed to debate and decide on limits to protests, I solicited for the coronavirus cabinet the opinion of Dr. Aviad Bakshi... according to which the government is the sole proper forum to decide the issue.”
Blue and White was stifling debate, he said. In the areas of public health, security and economics, it was permissible to hear differing views, but “the attorney- general has a monarchy over legal issues,” he added.
Cracks seemed to emerge in center and left- wing political support for the protesters. MK Ofer Shelah ( Yesh Atid- Telem) on Tuesday called on protesters to halt physical demonstrations during the period of the lockdown.
Shelah said he sympathized with efforts to highlight corruption by Netanyahu, whose trial for bribery and fraud is set to start in January. However, he said, the lockdown was a unique time period when other creative methods of protest should be pursued so that coronavirus rates could be lowered.
It was not clear that Shelah represented the view of the party, with his colleague MK Yorai Lahav Hertzanu tweeting that as long as there was no proof of infections at outdoor protests, they could be continued “full force.”
Moreover, the Crime Minister Movement criticized Shelah for “failing his first test as a leader.”
Last week, the Black Flags movement, the largest group organizing the protests, said it would temporarily halt them during the lockdown.
But the protest movement consists of disparate groups, and thousands showed up this past weekend even without the lead group.