Friedman: Extending West Bank agreements ‘ rights old wrongs’
PA condemns US funding of scientific projects in ‘ illegal’ settlements
Extending agreements between the US and Israel to the West Bank, Golan and east Jerusalem bolsters the ties between the countries, US Ambassador David Friedman said Wednesday in a ceremony removing the only territorial limitations in agreements between Washington and Jerusalem
“We are righting an old wrong and strengthening yet again the unbreakable bond between our two countries,” Friedman said at a signing ceremony with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Ariel University in Samaria.
Netanyahu and Friedman signed new versions of three agreements on research cooperation, which erase a line that says “cooperative projects sponsored by the foundation may not be conducted in geographic areas which came under the administration of the government of Israel after June 5, 1967, and may not relate to subjects primarily pertinent to such areas.”
The first agreement, signed in 1972, was the Binational Science Foundation ( BSF), followed in 1976 by the Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation ( BIRD), and then the Binational Agricultural Research and Development
Fund ( BARD) in 1977. All three had large endowments that provided grants to American and Israeli academics and companies for research and technology.
They also signed a new science and technology agreement, meant to increase governmentto- government cooperation at the highest levels, which also does not have geographic restrictions.
Friedman said that BIRD, BARD and BSF, as originally written, “were subject to political limitations that did not serve the goals sought to be achieved.”
The ambassador pointed to Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo’s announcement last year that the Trump administration no longer views Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria as being illegal per se.
In light of that decision, “these geographic restrictions [ in the agreements] no longer comport with our foreign policy,” Friedman said. “Plainly, this geographic restriction within the three agreements was an anachronism. It had no place within our evolving region – a region which, under the Trump administration, is continuously advancing the cause of peace in new and exciting ways.”
Friedman also said that
41,301 screened, the Health Ministry reported Wednesday evening – around 2% positive cases. There were 471 people in serious condition, including less than 200 who were intubated. The death toll stood at 2,484 at press time.
However, one sector is struggling with increasing infection.
The Health Ministry said that the level of morbidity among the Arab sector is high and spiking, and the Arab localities are at the top of the list of red and orange cities.
According to numbers presented by the Weizmann Institute of Science, there has been a 19% increase in the number of Arab patients in moderate or serious condition in the last week, as opposed to a 60% decrease among the ultra- Orthodox and a 37% decrease in general.
Gamzu said that there has been a significant decrease in the number of Arabs being tested for coronavirus and called on them to get screened.
“A drastic decrease [ in tests] has led to an increase in the rate of positive tests,” he explained. “It means that those who come and get tested in the end are only those who are already sick – the symptomatic.”
He added that, starting this coming weekend, there will be a program focused solely on reducing infection among Arab society.
“We are doing everything to help them,” he said. “The outbreak must be stopped.... We may ask for certain restrictions. I am currently in the process of examining what is being done in the education system in these cities.”
Health Minister Yuli Edelstein and Finance Minister Israel Katz went head- to- head for another round on Wednesday, fighting over whether street shops would open on Sunday, as Katz wants, or whether the reopening would be tabled to the next stage of the plan, as Edelstein insists is the best plan.
Katz said, “It’s preferable to go with one opinion tomorrow to the cabinet; if there isn’t agreement, there isn’t agreement. I’m for backing up the health minister in many areas, but in retail I won’t compromise.”
Edelstein responded, “Israel, I remind you that we’ve already been to this movie. There is no epidemiological logic in the opening of schools and retail together.”
Edelstein and the health officials in his office have said that schools should be opened first and morbidity examined after two weeks before making a decision about retail.
Katz insisted, “People need to work. [ Opening retail] will bring 80,000 people back to work.”
This discussion will also be brought to the cabinet on Thursday.
However, it seems that there is one thing everyone has agreed on: The Health Ministry’s ninestage exit strategy is expected to be reduced to six stages. Gamzu first told the media about the new proposal during his briefing.
As explained, the cabinet agreed earlier this week to resume classes for first through fourth graders on Sunday. In addition, it approved the reopening of salons and other one- onone activities and services ( driving lessons or personal training, for example), as well as alternative medicine treatments.
It appears that bed- and- breakfasts will now be included in this second stage, too, although a final decision will be made at the meeting.
If the six- stage plan is approved, the third phase of the plan would take off when there are around 500 new cases per day, likely in mid- November. At that time, retail will resume and museums and libraries will open. Grades 11 and 12 would also return to their classrooms.
A fourth phase would start when 250 new cases were diagnosed per day and would include restaurants, cafés, hotels, gyms, pools and sports classes, as well as the resumption of in- school classes for students in grades five and six.
A fifth phase would allow cultural activities and conferences to resume and bars to reopen, as well as send students in grades seven to 10 back to school. The final phase would open ballrooms and sporting events.
BORN
• its website “recognizes that Jerusalem,
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are territories whose final status must be determined by negotiations.” As such, anyone who was born in Jerusalem’s municipal borders after Israel’s establishment is listed as being born in Jerusalem. The policy explicitly says not to write that the person was born in Israel.
Under the new policy, individuals will be able to choose whether to have “Jerusalem, Israel” or just “Jerusalem” on their passports.
The State Department declined to comment on the matter.
Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December 2017 and moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has said he would not reverse that policy.
Since then, Friedman has pushed for the passport policy to be changed to be consistent with US recognition of Jerusalem.
In 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled on the case of the Zivotofsky family, which sued the State Department to allow for “Israel” to be written on son Menachem’s passport after he was born in Jerusalem. The family argued that Congress passed a law in 1995 recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and as such, it should be recognized on US passports.
The court determined that the president has the executive power to recognize foreign nations and, therefore, to determine what is written on US passports.
“Recognition is a matter on which the nation must speak with one voice,” justice Anthony Kennedy wrote. “That voice is the president’s.”
• about what that killing said about the society, what lessons needed to be internalized, what was needed to prevent additional acts of political violence.
Rabin’s assassination has left a lasting scar on the face of the nation. The day marking his assassination forces us to look at that scar, and we have – without fail and with a heavy pall in the air – every year since.
Jews do memory well. It’s part of our DNA, part of our strength as a people.
With Rabin’s murder, Israel lost not only a leader, an architect of the victory in the Six Day War, a Palmah hero and a symbol of the idealized Israeli – the tough, direct and determined Sabra, with faults but without pretension – the country also lost what remained of its innocence.
It lost that sense that it was somehow different, and that plagues such as these, political assassinations, were the bane of other countries, not our own; that somehow, we were above that, better than that, that we had learned from our history – the internal fighting that led to the fall of the Second Commonwealth – and that we would not make the same mistakes this time around.
Many are those who will look at Israeli society today – look at its deep fissures – compare it with the Israel of 25 years ago and say we are no better off now as a society than we were then.
But the very fact that as a nation we collectively stop and recognize for a moment the gravity and the tragedy of that day says something: that we have not forgotten, that we do care, that we are concerned, and that even if it is true that as a society we may not be much better now than we were then, the aspiration to be so still remains.