Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel and the PA reached an agreement on tax transfers that were frozen when the Palestinians joined the International Criminal Court. The Times of Israel reports that unpaid electricity bills were factored in.
2. The White House suggested that Iran could get significant economic relief immediately after signing a nuclear deal. The Wall St. Journal (click via Google News) got the scoop. The president’s comments about this and Russia’s S-300 sale stunned Israeli analysts.
The Obama administration estimates Iran has between $100 billion and $140 billion of its oil revenue frozen in offshore accounts as a result of sanctions. U.S. officials said they expect Tehran to gain access to these funds in phases as part of a final deal. Iran could receive somewhere between $30 billion and $50 billion upon signing the agreement, said congressional officials briefed by the administration.
3. Is Hamas moving towards an independent state in Gaza alone? Hamas officially denies this, but sources tell Khaled Abu Toameh otherwise:
If and when Hamas carries out its plan and establishes its own sovereign state in the Gaza Strip, the international community, primarily the U.S. and EU, will have to come to terms with the fact that the two-state solution has finally been realized; the Palestinians ended up with two states of their own — an Islamist emirate in the Gaza Strip and a PLO-controlled state in the West Bank.
4. Real People — Not Bus Stops: Memo to the New York Times: A Palestinian driver plowed his car into Israeli people, not a bus stop.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Saying it was deliberate, Israeli police arrested Khaled Kotina for ramming his car into two Israelis on Wednesday night. Shalom Yohai Sharki 25, succumbed to his injuries and was laid to rest. Another woman hit by the car, Shira Klein, remains in intensive care. Kotina says he lost control of his car in inclement weather. Times of Israel coverage.
• Junior jihad, or collateral damage waiting to happen? I think these photos picked up by the Daily Mail (story or tweet) are Palestinian child abuse. See Khaled Abu Toameh‘s take on Hamas and Fatah’s cynical exploitation of the youngsters.
• More info than you need to know about the UN’s peacekeepers in the Golan (especially the Irish contingent) at the Irish Times.
• Any BDS activists want to complain to ISIS about this?
Iranian Atomic Urgency
• Iran accused an Israeli journalist, Orly Azoulay, of being a spy after she spent two weeks visiting the Islamic Republic. Tehran officials insist that her YNet dispatch was full of falsehoods:
Armed with a visa issued by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, and without making any efforts to conceal her identity, Azoulay went to Iran as part of a delegation organized by the New York Times – and was warmly welcomed by her hosts.
• A released Iranian fact sheet of the nuclear agreement — not surprisingly — is significantly different than the US fact sheet.
• Vladimir Putin to Israel: Do as I say, not as I do.
Around the World
• Reuters: Members of the UN Security Council were left in tears after watching footage of doctors trying to resuscitate three children caught in a chlorine gas attack. The children, ages 1, 2, and 3, along with their parents and grandmother, all died when Syrian helicopters dropped barrel bombs on a northwestern village in March.
• France announced a three-year $108 million-plan to fight anti-Semitism and racism. The New York Times reports that the program includes “a nationwide awareness campaign, harsher punishments for racist acts and increased monitoring of online hate speech.” See also Roger Cohen‘s related commentary.)
• British Prime Minister David Cameron discussed anti-Semitism in the UK and Europe with Jeffrey Goldberg.
As well as the new threat of extremist Islamism, there has been an insidious, creeping attempt to delegitimize the state of Israel, which spills over often into anti-Semitism. We have to be very clear about the fact that there is a dangerous line that people keep crossing over. This is a state, a democracy that is recognized by the United Nations, and I don’t think we should be tolerant of this effort at delegitimization. The people who are trying to make the line fuzzy are the delegitimizers. And I have a very clear view, which is that if you disagree with the policies of Israel, fine, say so, but that is never a reason to take that out on Jewish communities. We have to be very clear about threats—this is a dangerous line that people keep crossing over, that says that anti-Zionism is a legitimate form of political discourse.
• Reporter Miri Michaeli Schwartz of Israel’s Channel 10 was harassed in Paris when some people noticed the Hebrew letters on her microphone. William Jacobson rounded up the key links.
What happened next was much more stressful, they surrounded me. Four or five men and began to swear at me, the word “Jew” was repeated. My hands are shaking three weeks after, when I think of the things they said. I stood in the street, I did not bother anyone and I got curses. threatening gestures, and actual threats. I looked around, the street was crowded with people who paid attention to what happened, viewing from the sidelines. A person who filmed what happened smartphone, but no one came to my aid. I felt threatened when I ran (yes, the right word) to the train station, there were soldiers. Only then they left me.
• Argentina‘s Senate unanimously approved a bill offering one-time payments to victims of the 1994 AMIA bombing. Eighty five people were killed and more than 100 were injured in the car bombing which has been tied to Iran.
• Madison police won’t charge anti-Semitic February vandalism as hate crime.
Commentary/Analysis
• Worth reading: Natan Sharansky speaks out on the Iranian talks, fears America has lot its way.
As a former Soviet dissident, I cannot help but compare this approach to that of the United States during its decades-long negotiations with the Soviet Union, which at the time was a global superpower and a existential threat to the free world. The differences are striking and revealing.
• David Rothkopf‘s reaction to the White House’s suggested economic concessions to Iran got a lot of buzz this weekend. He certainly hits the nail on the head.
Few would debate that Iran would be entitled to the restoration of funds and normal economic status should it end its nuclear program. Were Iran to do that, then clearly the sanctions program would be seen as a success. But the question the world is now confronted with is: Should Iran then also be entitled to economic normalization and the boon it would entail simply by putting is program on hold for a specified period of time?
Such a deal — in that light — sets a new standard. The underlying message effectively says that the United States and other major powers will only impose sanctions on countries that get very, very close to having nuclear weapons — say less than a year away. But so long as those countries’ nuclear weapons programs remain in the state at which we are willing to freeze Iran’s, then those countries are still free to go about their business and run their economies in ways that enable them to better fund those programs in the future.
• Former Secretary of State James Baker weighed in with his concerns on the nuclear deal with an op-ed in the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News).
• More commentary on the Iranian talks:
– Michael Gerson: What is the president doing on Iran?
– Abdulrahman Al-Rashed: Iran’s first acquisition after the deal
– Jay Nordlinger: The curious case of the missing nuclear fatwa
– Amir Taheri: Has Obama made agreement with Iran more difficult?
– Benny Avni: Amid talks, Mideast nightmare looms
– Mort Zuckerman: Obama’s unforgivable betrayal
• Assessing the likelihood of the PA accomplishing anything in the International Criminal Court, The Daily Beast‘s Andrew Novak raises this interesting point:
Finally, Palestinian membership may be part of a domestic political chess game between Hamas, which controls Gaza, and Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank. Fatah, the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, made the ICC referral, but Hamas was primarily responsible for the alleged Palestinian war crimes. Although Fatah would be loathe to admit it publicly, an ICC investigation into the Palestinian situation could be an effort by Fatah to strengthen its position against Hamas.
• For more commentary/analysis, see Elliott Abrams (Settling settlements: Netanyahu’s post-election choices),”Jamal” (Inside Yarmouk, ISIS deepens Palestinian misery), and a New York Times staff-ed (Anti-Semitism in the soccer stands).
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA Neil Crosby via flickr with additions by HonestReporting; money CC BY flickr/photosteve101; Putin CC BY-NC-SA flickr/World Economic Forum; atom CC BY-SA Deviant Art/deejaywill
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