Israel, Jordan Agree to Renormalize Ties

Today’s Top Stories

1. Israel is re-normalizing relations with Jordan that nose-dived after a shooting at the Israeli embassy in Amman. According to Jordanian media reports picked up by the Jerusalem Post, the Israeli government will pay $5 million to the Jordanian government, which will transfer the money to the families of two Jordanians killed in the July incident. As for reports that Israel will prosecute the guard involved, Reuters writes:

Instead, the Foreign Ministry and Shin Bet security agency will review protocols surrounding the actions taken by the guard, and his conduct, “and share the results with the Jordanians”, a diplomatic source said.

President Donald Trump’s advisers Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt reportedly helped broker the reconciliation.

2. US Vice President Mike Pence was due to arrive in Jerusalem today after visiting leaders Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah and telling them that the US still supports the two-state solution, remains committed to the status quo of Jerusalem’s holy sites, and that Israel and the Palestinians would have to agree on their own borders.

Ahead of Pence’s arrival and in response to Palestinian refusal to negotiate with the Trump administration, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that there would be no progress on peace without American involvement. The Palestinians are refusing to meet with Pence in protest against Trump’s Jerusalem declaration.

As usual, security is tight in Jerusalem, so if you’re going to be in the city, be aware of the road closures. Haaretz published the itinerary so you can be as far away from the vice president and his security detail as possible.

3. According to Haaretz and Israel HaYom, Hamas is keen to open a new front with Israel from Lebanon — possibly with Hezbollah’s assent.

4. New York Times on Israel’s “Biological” Racism?! Columnist Roger Cohen accuses Israel of the most gory, biology-based racism.

Israel and the Palestinians

• According to reports in the New York Times and Wall St. Journal (click via Twitter), the US plans to convert its consulate in Jerusalem. the hope is to have the building ready in 2019.

But the State Department has since settled on a more modest plan to convert an existing consular building in Arnona, a neighborhood in West Jerusalem. That will reduce the cost of the project and allow Ambassador David M. Friedman and his staff to move there as early as next year.

• In addition to the cuts in aid to the UN agency assisting Palestinian refugees, the US announced that a separate $45 million in food aid would not be transferred either, Reuters reports.

The United States had made clear to UNRWA that the $45 million was a pledge aimed at helping the agency with “forecasting,” but it was not a guarantee, Nauert told reporters at a regular State Department briefing.

In a nutshell, the Palestinian capital would be in an eastern Jerusalem suburb, Palestinians would get 90 percent of the West Bank with Israel to annex the main settlement blocs; Israel would maintain an overriding security responsibility.

Erekat recommended in his report that President Abbas reject the Trump peace plan out of hand. Erekat wrote that considering the Trump plan will give legitimacy to the Trump strategy of “imposing dictates” on the Palestinians “and will entrench the status quo and form an eternal autonomy” instead of a real independent Palestinian state.

• National Public Radio examines the political activity of the Palestinian Authority in eastern Jerusalem, which is prohibited by the Oslo accords.

• A soldier was injured in a Palestinian car-ramming attack at the entrance to Qasr al-Yahud. Located along the Jordan River, Qasr al-Yahud is a popular pilgrimage site for Christians who believe it to be the location where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.

• Blood is thicker than water — not.

Palestinian family shoots dead relative suspected of spying for Israel

Around the World

• The mayor-elect of New Orleans says she’ll support reconsidering a vote on a recently passed pro-BDS resolution.

Compounding the procedural deficiencies in the adoption of this resolution, its passage has shrouded the city in an undesired and damaging falsehood. Statements from outsiders now claim that New Orleans is now one of the largest cities in the United States supportive of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), a movement aimed at delegitimizing the State of Israel. This is totally inaccurate, untruthful and does not reflect the values of New Orleans. We are a city that is welcoming, and open to all. Well intentioned actions can be taken out of context by others for their own political benefit, with negative connotations that overshadow any original motives; I believe that is what happened with this resolution.

• Qatar doubles down on PR campaign appealing to US Jews and Washington insiders.

• Worth reading: With Hezbollah operatives on trial in Bulgaria, the US targeting Hezbollah’s drug trafficking and money laundering in Latin America, and the UK mulls blacklisting Hezbollah, The Media Line takes a closer look at Hezbollah’s “reign of terror.”

• Palestinian groups pulled out the Women’s March in Los Angeles on Saturday due to Scarlett Johansson’s support for Israel. The actress — who stared down BDS activists by serving as a spokesperson for Israeli SodaStream — was one of the featured speakers.

• At Britain’s Warwick U., Jewish activists were barred from a ‘public’ campus talk by pro-Palestinian academic who smeared Israel with a eugenics libel.

The lecture was titled ‘Anti-colonial Resistance is Fertile: Sperm Smuggling and Birth Strikes in Palestine/Israel’ . . .

The description went on say that the lecture would “propose a reproductive sabotage framework”, to be adopted by the Palestinians as a form of “resistance and empowerment” against Israel.

In a blog, Mr Collier described the allegation against Israel as, in his view, “a vile antisemitic slur”.

Commentary

• If you’ve ever felt like you want to go into a self-imposed news-blackout, Christopher Herbert tried it for a year.

Ignorance is far easier than I thought. I finish two or three audiobooks a week. I read novels instead of newspapers. Five months into my blackout, I’m happier than I ever was back in the days when I was informed. My fingernails are growing back. The sleeping pills remain in the bottle. I’m getting more work done. My family comes home at the end of the day to find me smiling, chopping things for dinner without my old vegicidal rage.

And yet, part of me can’t stop feeling guilty about feeling good.

• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .

– Oren Liebermann: Israel and Trump: United against the world
– Eyal Zisser: Palestinians in race against time
– Mordechai Kedar: Why Arabs and Muslims will not accept Israel as the Jewish state
– Melanie Phillips: Palestinianism is over — someone please tell the British
– New York Post (staff-ed): Mahmoud Abbas just got exactly what he asked for
– Vivian Bercovici: Dear Mr. Ambassador, why is Canada funding anti-Semitism?
– Herb Keinon: What is India’s de-hyphenation policy toward Israel and why does it matter?
– Josh Davidovich: In weaving India and Israel together, challenges loom
– Virag Gulyas: BDS is winning the PR war by ‘influencer-branding’
– Derek Maltz, Emanuele Ottolenghi: It’s time for the Justice Dept. to hold Hezbollah accountable

Featured image: CC0 Unsplash/Johnson Wang; King Abdullah via YouTube/ABC News (Australia); Erekat via YouTube/AP Archive; Qasr El Yahud via YouTube/Marie BLANC DURAND; New Orleans CC BY-NC Don Pirolo; Johansson via YouTube/Tony’s – 24/7 Eyes;