Today’s Top Stories
1. The Palestinians dropped their bid to kick Israel out of international soccer. Haaretz describes the compromise that was reached with International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) executives:
Then, the Congress passed an amended version of the Palestinian proposal, which called for the formation of a committee to look into freedom of movement of Palestinian soccer players. The committee would also look at Israeli racism and the status of Israeli league teams based in the West Bank.
More on the fallout below.
2. Pope Francis: “anyone who does not recognize the Jewish people and the State of Israel — and their right to exist — is guilty of anti-Semitism.” The Times of Israel has background on the Pope’s comments to Portuguese-Jewish journalist Henrique Cymerman.
The pope got thumbs-ups from Jonathan Tobin and a New York Daily News staff-ed.
3. Cypriot police busted a Hezbollah operative with nearly two tons of ammonium nitrate in his Larnaca home.
Security sources in Israel say they believe the apartment in which the suspect was captured was an explosive- materials storeroom that belonged to Hezbollah and was supposed to constitute an outlet for carrying out a large-scale series of terrorist attacks across Europe against Jewish, Israeli and Western targets.
This has Benjamin Weinthal asking if Europe will now fully ban Hezbollah.
4. “Modern and Hip”: Journalist expresses surprise that “modern and hip” cabinet minister has a differing opinion on the peace process.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Diplomats to YNet: With the FIFA fight over for now, Israel’s next battle will be over the Olympics.
• Palestinian soccer chief Jibril Rajoub is under fire back home and on social media.
Many Palestinians fear that dropping the bid will also set a precedent and lead to international pressure to withdraw other appeals to the international community.
• Israel gave a green light to a number of Qatari-funded Gaza reconstruction projects.
• The Olympia Food Co-Op lost its protection from lawsuits over its boycott of Israeli products. The JTA and Legal Insurrection explain how it unfolded and what it means.
• Whatever happened to the Palestinian parliament building that went up in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis?
• Terrific New York Times piece on Israel’s pioneering conservation of water. Reporter Isabel Kershner looks at the Jewish state’s water recycling, desalination, and other technologies making water use more efficient.
Israel has, in the meantime, become the world leader in recycling and reusing wastewater for agriculture. It treats 86 percent of its domestic wastewater and recycles it for agricultural use — about 55 percent of the total water used for agriculture. Spain is second to Israel, recycling 17 percent of its effluent, while the United States recycles just 1 percent, according to Water Authority data.
Around the World
• World powers said to agree on ‘snapback’ sanctions mechanism
• Businessmen unable to wait for international sanctions on Iran to end are already beating a path to Persia, scouting out opportunities and lining up partners. But all the wheeling and dealing could pose problems for the White House. The Washington Times explains why:
The enthusiasm for deals could prove a political headache for the Obama administration, which has insisted that current sanctions could quickly “snap back” into effect if Tehran was caught cheating on its pledge not to seek a nuclear weapon and to allow international inspections. The more deals that are struck in the wake of a deal, the more difficult it will be to cut them off later on, critics of the deal have argued.
• Judging from Arab reports picked up by YNet, Russia’s abandoning Bashar Assad.
• If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a video of Professor Robert Wistrich’s last public appearance before he died of a heart attack last week. Wistrich, the world’s foremost authority on anti-Semitism, addressed the biennial Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism.
Commentary/Analysis
• Egypt has only opened the Rafah border crossing to Gaza for five days all year, though 10 Palestinians have died at the crossing waiting to return to their homes. Had these people died stranded at the Israel-Gaza border, the foreign press would’ve been all over the story, writes Khaled Abu Toameh:
Egypt’s continued closure of the Rafah terminal has failed to attract the attention of many Western journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some of the journalists say they are unable to report about the plight of the Palestinian travellers stranded on the Egyptian side of the border because the Egyptian authorities will not allow them to reach the area. Other journalists find it easier to cover the story from the Israeli side, which allows them to put the onus of the blockade on Israel.
• Jonathan Tobin points out that the core disputes between Israel and Palestinian soccer executives were resolved before the FIFA meeting. So why did Jibril Rajoub keep pushing for Israel’s ouster until it was clear he didn’t have enough votes?
Every time Israel makes a concession, whether by setting up the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords, offering statehood as it first did in 2000 or withdrawing from all of Gaza, it not only gets no credit. Israel’s willingness to be compromise only seems to generate more hostility from its foes and their foreign cheerleaders.
The problems of athletes was only a pretext for another straightforward effort to ostracize the Jewish state and stemmed from a political culture that regards the war on Zionism to be indistinguishable from the assertion of Palestinian identity.
• I’m also reading:
– Boaz Bismuth: No red card for Israel
– Melanie Phillips: Israel’s foreign ministry moves to be right
– Jeff Robbins: Hamas quashes reasons for hope
– Jonathan Spyer: Hezbollah deepens its involvement in Syria
• For a sense of what the other side’s saying, see Hebrew University’s radical anti-Zionist professor, David Shulman, and his take on Breaking the Silence, at the New York Review of Books.
Featured image: CC BY flickr/Official GDC with additions by HonestReporting; CC BY-NC-ND flickr/Janie Easterman; soccer ball CC BY flickr/Raul Hernandez Gonzalez
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