Today’s Top Stories
1. New US Ambassador David Friedman says the Palestinians dropped their demands for a settlement freeze as a precondition for peace talks. The Jerusalem Post picked up on the interview posted on Israel HaYom’s Hebrew site.
“We have no demands for a settlement freeze and [Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas] Abu Mazen wants to meet [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu without any preconditions,” Friedman said in an interview published on Wednesday . . .
Friedman pointed out that Israel did impose a 10-month moratorium on settler housing starts in 2009 and 2010, when former US president Barack Obama first entered office.
That freeze did not lead to negotiations, Friedman pointed out.
Strangely, Israel HaYom’s English site omitted the part of the quote about Abbas dropping the preconditions, which is the newsiest part of the story. And there’s no confirmation from Ramallah.
2. While Jerusalem downplayed Trump’s intelligence slip with Russian diplomats, unhappy Israeli intelligence officials said they are reassessing what info they share with the US, reports the Times of Israel and USA Today. Former Mossad chief Danny Yatom said Israel should “punish the Americans.”
This follows the New York Times‘ revelation that sensitive information about Islamic State which Donald Trump provided to visiting Russian diplomats came from Israeli intelligence. Filling in more details and reactions, ABC News reports that Israel’s spy who provided details of an IS plot — to blow up an airplane with a new type of explosive hidden in a laptop — is now in danger. Seth Frantzman traces the sources he’s seeing in the key media reports.
3. Trump to unveil plans for an ‘Arab NATO’ in Saudi Arabia to lead fight against Islamic State and serve as a Sunni counterweight to Iran, the Washington Post reports.
The idea of an “Arab NATO” has been bandied about for years — and has always had strong Saudi support — but until now was never openly endorsed by the U.S. government. Officials said the concept fits three major tenets of Trump’s “America First” foreign-policy frame: asserting more American leadership in the region, shifting the financial burden of security to allies and providing for U.S. jobs at home (through the massive arms sales).
4. IDF “Dirty” Weapons Cause Palestinian Cancer? The bulk of the article isn’t concerned with Palestinians, Gaza or Israel, but someone in The Independent opted for a sub-header playing to an Israel-bashing audience.
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Israel and the Palestinians
• Every year, Israel’s state comptroller issues a report on government efficiency. One finding from Joseph Shapira’s audit: Israel employs untrained local staff in diplomatic roles abroad, harming its foreign relations. Haaretz explains:
The comptroller’s report states that, in addition to the more than 700 professional diplomats stationed overseas by the Foreign Ministry and envoys of other government ministries serving around the world, Israeli embassies and consulates employ more than 3,200 local employees, some of whom are Israeli citizens. Most of these local employees are clerical or security staff but a considerable number work in core diplomatic positions – involved in contacts with the officials in national legislatures, executive branch officials, the media and the business and civilian sectors. They do so in violation of Foreign Ministry procedures and without any appropriate training, Shapira wrote, adding the situation is the result of ministry staff shortages and dozens of unfilled diplomatic posts . . . .
“The operational crisis in which the Foreign Ministry finds itself is liable to harm its ability to properly represent the State of Israel’s diplomatic, public relations, economic and consular interests at its missions abroad.”
Among the other issues critiqued in the comptroller’s 39-chapter report were the government’s handling of kashrut supervision, cross-border pollution and cybercrime.
• Reuters: Arab Bank settlement over Hamas attacks may hit snag in US appeals court
• Shin Bet busts terror cell planning attacks on soldiers.
• Five Palestinians arrested for making pipe bombs out of fireworks
Around the World
Tamimi masterminded the 2001 the suicide bombing of a Jerusalem pizzaria which killed Roth’s 15-year-old daughter Malki and 14 others. Tamimi was eventually caught and convicted, but was released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit swap. She now lives in Jordan. More on the story at The Australian (click via Twitter). In a separate op-ed (click via Twitter), Roth writes:
The challenges for us are clear but not simple: to persuade the king of Jordan that Jordan’s friends and allies, including the US and Australia, are appalled by the efforts to shelter a confessed mass-murderer. If Tamimi, who boasts publicly and often of the carnage her bomb caused, keeps being shielded from justice, Jordanian pronouncements about its dedication to fighting terror will have lost all meaning.
If you read one article today, let it be this one by @arnoldroth – PM @TurnbullMalcolm, your move. https://t.co/XnhNKz59DA
— Emily Gian (@emilygian) May 17, 2017
• It’s annoying that certain journalists block me on social media but it’s nothing personal. But it’s dodgy diplomacy that Sweden placed Israel’s Ambassador to Stockholm Isaac Bachman on a Twitter blacklist along with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs “for disseminating hate speech online.”
(UPDATE: Just before this roundup was published, the Swedish government agency responsible for the blacklist apologized and reinstated the accounts.)
Now, that #Israel 's MFA and ambassador are blocked – #Sweden is much safer in reading Iran and others, that were not blocked.@SweInstitute https://t.co/C87XzwTikb
— Isaac Bachman (@isaacbachman) May 16, 2017
• Norwegian paper’s cartoon suggests circumcision akin to pedophilia and insanity.
• Danish teen convicted of planning to bomb Jewish school.
Commentary/Analysis
• Lots of spilled ink and burnt pixels over Trump and Israel today.
– New York Post (staff-ed): The media might have revealed more intel than Trump
– Anshel Pfeffer: Trump’s leak of Israeli secrets threatens an intimate intelligence relationship
– Allison Kaplan Sommer: The Wall, the embassy and now the intel: What else can go wrong ahead of Trump’s Israel visit?
– Bernard-Henri Levy: Trump has no real love for Israel
– Dan Margalit: Trump is a friend, and will remain one
– Orly Azoulay: Trump’s visit: The messiah isn’t coming to Israel
– Andrew Silow-Carroll: When a government won’t let you look away
• Tweet of the day goes to Michelle Chabin:
Lots of speculation in #Israel over what #realDonaldTrump will write on the note he places in Western Wall: 'God Help Me' might be wise.
— Michele Chabin (@MicheleChabin1) May 17, 2017
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Nahum Barnea: Adding fuel to Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike
– Daniel Elbaum: ‘Left’ behind — Israel as a progressive cause
– Meir Javedanfar: Iran elections: What if Rouhani wins? What if Raisi wins?
Featured image: CC0 stevepb; Friedman via YouTube/IsraeliPM; Abbas via YouTube/Russia Insider; Netanyahu via YouTube/IsraeliPM; Trump via YouTube/The White House; spies CC0 Pixabay;
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