Today’s Top Stories
1. Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert has been convicted of fraud and breach of trust in the so-called Talansky case. While he was cleared two years ago of the same corruption charges, a retrial was ordered after incriminating recordings made by his former assistant Shula Zaken were allowed to be submitted as evidence.
2. As Iranian nuclear talks appear to be leading up to an agreement, Israeli PM Netanyahu has released a statement:
The agreement being formulated in Lausanne sends a message that there is no price for aggression and on the contrary – that Iran’s aggression is to be rewarded. The moderate and responsible countries in the region, especially Israel and also many other countries, will be the first to be hurt by this agreement. One cannot understand that when forces supported by Iran continue to conquer more ground in Yemen, in Lausanne they are closing their eyes to this aggression. But we are not closing our eyes and we will continue to act against every threat in every generation, certainly in this generation.
See below for more commentary on the Iran talks.
3. Hilary Clinton tells Conference of Presidents that she wants better relations with Israel. The implication here is that Israel is a wedge issue even within the Democratic party.
4. UK Columnist: ‘Israel Now More Wicked and Dangerous Than Hamas’ – The Independent’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown claims that Israel is “now more wicked and dangerous than Hamas” and praises anti-Zionist Jews who demonize Israel.
5. HR’s Yarden Frankl joins VOI’s Josh Hasten in-studio to discuss this week’s media coverage of Israel: A reporter writes that he “didn’t have the time” to examine the evidence of Hamas war crimes in Israel; and a columnist for the Independent with a history of anti-Israel bias writes that Israel is “more wicked and dangerous than Hamas.”
Israel and the Palestinians
• Politico reports that the White House is now working to cool down the rhetoric and public tension currently afflicting relations with Israel. “We’ve made our point. The message has clearly been received,” a White House official said. “The next move is theirs, presumably after the new government has been formed.”
• Hamas and Islamic Jihad are furious at Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for urging an Arab intervention in the Gaza Strip akin to the Saudi-led assault on Yemen, the Anadolu press agency reports.
• Hamas engineer Dirar Abu Sissi was convicted and sentenced to 21 years in jail, four years after Israel nabbed the infamous rocket maker who was involved in increasing the range of Kassam rockets from six kilometers to 22 kilometers.
• The Virginia State Bar responds to complaints about their sudden decision to cancel a meeting in Israel.
• Members of a Hungarian punk rock band said they would ignore pleas and anti-Semitic comments from fans who want the band to cancel its upcoming concert in Israel.
• Two U.S. Senators have introduced anti-BDS legislation. “The pair take issue with the way Israel, America’s “greatest ally in the Middle East”, is targeted, while serious rights offenders around the world are given a free pass by activists.”
• Outgoing UN special coordinator says he’s witnessed “end of era”, referring to the Oslo process.
• The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency on Sunday described President Obama’s Middle East policy as one of “willful ignorance,” saying the administration needs a clearer strategy for dealing with conflicts emerging across the region.
“At the end of the day, we have just this incredible policy confusion — never mind what our strategy is to execute that policy,” Flynn said. “We have to stop what we’re doing and take a hard look at everything going on the Middle East because it’s not going in the right direction.”
• Vladimir Putin has said Russia will fight for an independent Palestinian state, and called for the issues of the Middle East to be resolved through peaceful means.
Commentary/Analysis
• The Times of London (pay-wall) suspects a bad Iran deal is in the making:
If a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme is clinched in the coming days, it will be hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough. It will be nothing of the kind. Judging by leaks from the negotiating table, Tehran has not done enough to allay suspicions that it intends eventually to produce nuclear weapons.
Worse, if the framework agreement is signed on the basis of current drafts it will contribute to a reckless recasting of the US position in the Middle East. Iran would be upgraded to the status of regional ally, while Israel, whose fears have been largely ignored during a year of diplomacy, would be awarded the status of regional irritant. …
The agreement taking shape in Lausanne is based on the most generous possible reading of Iranian intentions, namely that the regime will make genuine concessions because it is desperate to be readmitted to the club of rational, benign states who crave nothing but peace in the Middle East. That is naive. Instead of containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, this deal may simply give Tehran carte blanche to plan a future with its own bomb.
• Jackson Diehl addresses the possibility of a U.S. sponsored UN Security Council resolution aimed at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
The U.S. draft probably would have one element that would please Netanyahu and infuriate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, however: a stipulation that Israel would remain the homeland of the Jewish people. Abbas’s categorical rejection of that principle helped to cause the breakdown of Kerry’s diplomacy, and it would almost certainly mean that the Palestinians would join Israelis in rejecting the resolution.
Why go forward with a text that both sides would spurn? Obama’s hope would be that his initiative could win unanimous support from the Security Council and thus set the terms of reference for a future settlement, presumably under different Israeli and Palestinian leaders. He could eventually become the grandfather of Middle East peace; at a minimum, diplomats who now talk of the “Clinton parameters” from 2000 would henceforth speak of the “Obama framework.”
• Jeffrey Goldberg addresses what to worry about in an Iran nuclear deal:
The largest question in my mind concerns the matter of break-out time—how long it would take for Iran, once it made a decision to violate the terms of a deal and go for full nuclearization, to actually make a deliverable weapon. The goal of the Obama administration is to make sure that it would take Iran at least a year to cross the threshold. The assumption is that a year would give the West time to devise a response—including, if necessary, a military response. This will be among the issues of greatest controversy because this is an easily misunderstood and distorted matter, one that is both devilishly complicated and, in many ways, theoretical. On this issue, as on others, I will be listening to experts I respect. There are several, but three of the people I will be listening to carefully on this issue in particular are Gary Samore, formerly President Obama’s point man on the Iran nuclear file; David Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security, and Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director general of the IAEA. If these three, and a handful of others, seem nervous about the details of a framework deal, should one be reached, then I’m going to be nervous as well.
• Jonah Goldberg asks whether Jewish Americans can support both Democrats and Israel.
• New York Times columnist Ross Douthat implies Tel Aviv is Israel’s capital, writing, “Tehran can gradually join Riyadh, Cairo and Tel Aviv in a multipolar order.” Otherwise, important reading about US foreign policy strategy in the Middle East.
Featured image: CC BY-NC Israel Defense Forces via flickr with additions by HonestReporting
