Israelis wonder how long Netanyahu can juggle positions
WWII bomb delays holiday
FRANKFURT, Germany — Explosives experts on Sunday defused a large World War II aerial bomb in the southern German city of Augsburg — clearing the way for thousands of evacuated residents to return to their Christmas celebrations at home.
City police tweeted they had “good news at Christmas” just before 7 p.m. local time Sunday. They had earlier been unable to say how long residents would have to stay away.
Some 32,000 households with 54,000 residents in the city’s historic central district were forced to leave by 10 a.m. Christmas morning so experts could handle the bomb.
They had to clean seven decades of muck off the bomb so they could find and disable its three detonators. The munition’s large size — 1.8 tons — suggested it was a so-called blockbuster of the type dropped by British forces, with the aim of blowing surrounding buildings apart so accompanying incendiary bombs could start fires more easily.
The bomb was uncovered last week during construction work in the city’s historic central district. Police said Christmas Day was the best time to defuse it.
Large quake hits Chile
SANTIAGO, Chile — A powerful earthquake shook southern Chile on Sunday, but there were no immediate reports of deaths and only minor known damage.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.6 quake struck at 11:22 a.m. local time (9:22 a.m. EST; 14:22 GMT) near the southern tip of Chiloe Island, about 25 miles south-southwest of Puerto Quello and at a depth of 22 miles.
JERUSALEM — For years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, a conservative, has played a double act, competing domestically with his right-wing rivals in backing the settlement projects all over the occupied West Bank while professing support for a two-state solution with the Palestinians.
Now, with the stinging U.N. Security Council resolution Friday condemning Israeli settlement construction, Israeli politicians and analysts on the right, the left and in the political center said Netanyahu’s game may soon be up.
The Israeli right, feeling empowered by the advent of the Trump administration, which is expected to be more sympathetic to Israeli’s current policies, is pushing Netanyahu to abandon the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, long considered the only viable solution to the conflict.
Naftali Bennett, the leader of the prosettlement Jewish Home party in Netanyahu’s governing coalition, with whom Netanyahu and his Likud Party compete for votes, is goading him to take on more extreme positions such as annexing parts of the West Bank, adding to a sense in Israel that the real Netanyahu may have to stand up and decide which side he is on.
“He has to choose between the international community and Bennett,” said Shlomo Avineri, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “It is not an easy choice, but he has to make a choice,” Avineri said, adding, “Is Israel going to alienate itself from the whole world for the sake of settlement activity? And it is the whole world. Is this what Zionism is about?”
For a second consecutive day Sunday, Netanyahu lambasted the departing Obama administration, publicly accusing it of having orchestrated Friday’s Security Council resolution, despite denials from Washington. The United States refrained from using its veto power, as it has done many times before to shield Israel, and abstained in the 14-0 vote.
“From the information that we have, we have no doubt that the Obama administration initiated it, stood behind it, coordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting.
Referring to the U.S. secretary of state, Netanyahu added, “As I told John Kerry on Thursday, friends don’t take friends to the Security Council,” and he said he was looking forward to working with President-elect Donald Trump’s administration when it takes office next month.
The Foreign Ministry summoned ambassadors of countries that had voted in favor of the resolution for personal meetings with ministry officials in Jerusalem, despite the Christmas holiday, which some of those countries celebrate.
In a highly unusual move, Netanyahu, who also is the foreign minister, summoned the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel B. Shapiro, for a meeting, though it was not immediately clear when that would take place.
Netanyahu also instructed his ministers to suspend their diplomatic activities and contacts with counterparts from the countries that had voted for the resolution for the next three weeks, until the U.S. administration changes, and to suspend travel to those countries, according to Israeli news reports.
Israeli news reports also said the defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, had instructed Israel’s agencies to sever contacts with Palestinian Authority representatives on civil, not security, matters. The ministry did not immediately confirm the reports.
Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestine Liberation Organization official and the Palestinians’ veteran negotiator, called on Israel “to seize the opportunity, to wake up, to stop the violence, to stop settlements, and to resume negotiations.” Netanyahu said he is ready for negotiations anytime, but with no preconditions.