Smashed ice cream parlours and burned synagogues leave Israel facing new threat from the inside

James Rothwell

YAHOO / TELEGRAPH

Israelis take cover in a shop as a siren rings during an attack of rockets from Gaza, in the country's Mediterranean city of Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv. - AFP

As Henry Sasin watched the news unfold of Arab and Jewish riots across Israeli cities, he received a widely circulated message on his phone.

“I am honoured to invite you to take part in a mass murder of Arabs," it read.

Mr Sasin, a Christian Arab, read on.

"This will take place at 6pm today in Bat Yam promenade,” the message, forwarded by a concerned friend, continued. “Please come with the appropriate equipment - swords, knives, rocks, pistols."

His heart sank when he saw a reference to a seaside shop called "Victory". It was his own ice cream parlour.

An Israeli man stands at a restaurant that was attacked the previous night in Israel's Mediterranean city of Bat Yam - AFP

By 6.20pm, videos were already being posted on social media that showed a gang of rioters kicking down the Victory parlour’s railings, smashing its windows and destroying the shop counters.

It was just one violent attack among dozens across Israeli cities this week, where Jewish and Arab extremists have been torching each others' shops, synagogues, schools and cars.

While the rockets raining on Gaza and Israel are in some ways a familiar sight, sectarian clashes inside Israel this week have come as a shock to many. They show just how far Arab-Israeli relations have deteriorated.

The violence has become so intense that Reuven Rivlin, the president, has described the situation as a “civil war,” while prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared there was “no greater threat” to Israeli security.

Mr Netanyahu has vowed to restore order and is reportedly considering the deployment of military forces inside Israel.

The morning after the attack, Mr Sasin returned to his ice cream parlour and inspected the damage, as his staff began clearing up broken glass.

“I saw that everything was broken, even the cashier, and all the glass windows had been smashed in,” he told the Sunday Telegraph.

Asked why he thought his shop had been targeted, he simply replied: “Because I am a Christian Arab.”

He was one of the lucky ones. Footage of a far-Right Israeli mob attacking a man they believed to be an Arab was aired live on television during the riot.

The shocking images showed a man being forcibly removed from his car and beaten by a crowd of dozens until he lost consciousness.

Far-right lawmaker Betzalel Smotrich, head of the "Religious Zionism" party, said he was "ashamed" of the "atrocious cruelty" of the attack.

A far-Right Israeli mob attacking who they considered an Arab man, on the seafront promenade of Bat Yam - AFP

"Jewish brothers, stop! We cannot under any circumstances allow ourselves to take part in violent acts," he said.

Israel's chief rabbi Yitzhak Yossef called for an end to attacks by Jews.

The riots which have swept across the country this week are different from what has come before.

They are not being waged, as is often the case, between settlers and Palestinians in the disputed territory of the West Bank, but in Israel's own cities - including the northern tourism hotspots of Acre and Haifa.

And they suggest that an alarming new front is emerging in the world's oldest conflict.

In Acre this week, Arab extremists torched the popular Uri Buri fish restaurant, while in the city of Lod, an industrial city near Tel Aviv with drab rows of grey homes with barred windows, where 40 percent of the population is Arab, two synagogues were set alight.

The Telegraph visited one of the synagogues on Friday, where the interior was blackened by fire and the floor was covered in debris.

A picture taken in Acre, a mixed Arab-Jewish town in northwest Israel, shows the Uri Buri restaurant after it was attacked and burned by Arab extremists - AFP

One Jewish resident said they would not only repair but expand the synagogue in defiance of Arab rioters.

Police said the inter-community violence has reached a point not seen in decades, with security forces “literally preventing pogroms from taking place”.

After the synagogue in Lod was torched a state of emergency and a curfew were declared, and one person was in critical condition after being shot by Arab residents.

Over 150 arrests were made in Lod alone and Arab towns in northern Israel, police said on Thursday.

A gunman also opened fire at a group of patrolling armed Jews on Thursday, wounding one person.

Also on Thursday, a Jewish family was attacked in the Arab city of Umm al-Fahm before being rescued by police, and an officer was shot and wounded near Ramla, another mixed city near Lod, police said.

An Israeli man looks inside a synagogue, after it was set on fire by Arab-Israelis, in the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Lod - AFP

Tensions were first fuelled by the threat of Palestinian evictions in East Jerusalem and police raids on Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina.

But they have escalated dramatically since Hamas launched rockets at Israel and Israel struck back with air and artillery bombardments on Gaza

Back at Mr Sasin’s ice cream shop in Bat Yam, residents were approaching him outside to commiserate his loss - both Arabs and Jews.

One Jewish man, who was struggling to contain his outrage at the ice cream vendor's ordeal, said he was utterly disgusted by the attack.

As for Mr Sasin, he said his anger lied elsewhere. "I am not angry with any person," he said, before returning to repairs on his ravaged ice cream parlour.

"I am angry at the Israeli government. It is not teaching co-existence and respect for others."

 

Shocking pictures have shown dead children being pulled from the wreckage of homes in Gaza after another night of air strikes in the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The Israeli military last night continued strikes on the Gaza Strip - while Hamas fired rockets back - as the latest conflict moved into its seventh day. Israel said last night they targeted the home of a top Hamas leader, as its president vowed to continue launching airstrikes on Gaza. Military forces said they targeted the home of Yehiyeh Sinwar, in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza Strip last night. Sinwar is the most senior Hamas leader inside the territory. The Israeli military also launched a strike on the home of his brother. It comes as the UN Security Council - the UN body charged with ensuring international peace and security - is set to meet to discuss the conflict. The meeting will be public and is thought will include both Israeli and Palestinian participants, according to the Associated Free Press (AFP). This morning, photographs, which are too graphic to publish, show dead children being pulled from the wreckage of homes in Gaza after Israeli air strikes last night. Other pictures show rescuers helping injured children from bombed out homes. According to the Gaza health ministry, 174 Palestinians have died since the start of the conflict on Monday. Among the people killed are 47 children, it said. In Israel, 10 people have been killed in total, with barrages of rockets fired from Gaza. 

 

Israeli-Palestinian conflict: why is there violence in Gaza and Jerusalem?

Campbell MacDiarmid

YAHOO / TELEGRAPH

Smoke and a ball of fire rise above buildings in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, during an Israeli air strike, on May 12, 2021. - AFP

What sparked the latest conflict between Israel and Gaza?

For weeks, Palestinian protesters and Israeli police have clashed daily in Jerusalem, with a series of incidents during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan contributing to the mounting hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians.

Last month extreme right right Israelis marched through East Jerusalem chanting “Death to Arabs” amid tensions over Ramadan restrictions and videos online showing Palestinian attacks on Jews.

The looming eviction of Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem to make room for Israeli settlers has further inflamed anger. Israel describes it as a property dispute but critics describe it as state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.

On Wednesday the minister for the Middle East James Cleverly said “We urge Israel to cease such actions, which in most cases are contrary to international humanitarian law.”

Clashes around the al-Aqsa mosque compound have seen Israeli police firing rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades inside what is the third holiest site in Islam. The compound is also home to the Dome of the Rock and the site of the biblical Jewish temple, of which only the Western Wall remains.

Control over Jerusalem in general and the holy hilltop compound in particular are an especially emotive issue for many Jews and Palestinians.

What has happened so far?

Since Monday Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip have fired over 1,000 rockets towards Israel, targeting civilian centres including Tel Aviv and Beer Sheva.

Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system has intercepted most of the rockets but at least 20 have struck home, killing several people, wounding more and damaging buildings, cars and other infrastructure.

Israel has responded with hundreds of air strikes on Gaza, a densely populated and built up coastal strip in which the militants have embedded themselves within civilian populations.

Israel on Thursday night appeared to declare a start to an anticipated offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip as Hamas continued to bombard the Jewish state with rocket fire.

“IDF air and ground troops are currently attacking in the Gaza Strip,” the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said in a brief message, signalling the most serious escalation since the 2014 war.

Footage appeared to show dozens of rockets raining down on the Palestinian enclave, however, the Israeli army later clarified that its troops had not entered the Gaza Strip as it had earlier stated, blaming an "internal communication" problem for the confusion.

So far 65 people have been reported killed in Gaza and seven in Israel, including one soldier.

Will the conflict get worse?

The United Nations envoy for Middle East Peace, Tor Wennesland, warned on Wednesday the two sides are heading "towards a full-scale war".

As the death toll grows, reining in the conflict will become more difficult and on the ground rhetoric by some Israeli and Palestinian leaders has reflected the high levels of communal animosity.

In an unusually strong statement, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Wednesday denounced "bloodthirsty Arab mobs" after rioting by Arab-Israelis spread across Israel.

There have been calls for calm but little sign that the international community is willing to intervene in the conflict. On Wednesday the UK said the recent escalation was “deeply concerning” and “the worst violence seen there in several years”.

“As the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have made clear, this cycle of violence must stop and every effort must be made to avoid the loss of life, especially that of children,” Mr Cleverly said. Key Israeli ally the United States has thrown its weight behind Israel, with President Joe Biden condemning the rocket attacks and pledging his "unwavering support for Israel's security and Israel's legitimate right to defend itself, while protecting civilians."

Gaza War Escalates. Rioting and mob violence between Arabs and Jews across Israel. Rockets from Gaza and Israeli airstrikes kill civilians.

Israeli police patrolling on Wednesday during clashes between Jews and Arabs in Lod.Credit...Heidi Levine/Associated Press

NY TIMES

By Patrick Kingsley

JERUSALEM — A new front opened in the military showdown between the Israeli Army and Palestinian militants in Gaza on Wednesday as a wave of mob violence between Jews and Arabs spread across several Israeli cities, leading to riots and attacks in the streets as rockets and missiles streaked across the sky.

Israel said it assassinated 10 senior militants and continued to pound both military and residential areas across the Gaza Strip with airstrikes, while Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza, and its allies continued to fire rockets into civilian areas across central and southern Israel.

More than 1,000 rockets had been fired from Gaza by Wednesday night, most of them intercepted by an antimissile defense system, the Israeli military said.

More than 67 Palestinians, including 16 children, have died since the start of the conflict on Monday, Palestinian health officials said. The rockets fired by Hamas and its Islamist ally, Islamic Jihad, killed at least six Israeli civilians, including a 5-year-old boy and one soldier.


ImageThe funeral on Wednesday of a woman who died in a bombardment in Gaza.Credit...Hosam Salem for The New York Times


The fighting showed no signs of letting up. An Israeli military official said Wednesday that three infantry brigades were “preparing for a worst-case scenario,” confirming that a ground invasion could follow the bombardment from the air.

But the most unexpected developments played out on the streets of Israeli cities and towns, as rival Jewish and Arab mobs attacked people, cars, shops, offices and hotels.

One of the most chilling incidents was in Bat Yam, a seaside suburb south of Tel Aviv, where dozens of Jewish extremists took turns beating and kicking a man presumed to be an Arab, even as his body lay motionless on the ground. A video of the attack was broadcast on Israeli television.


An image taken from video showing a right-wing Israeli mob attacking an Arab man in Bat Yam.Credit...Kan 11 Public Broadcaster


In Acre, a northern coastal town, an Arab mob beat a man presumed to be Jewish with sticks and rocks, leaving him in a critical condition in another attack captured on video. In Tamra, an Arab mob attacked a man presumed to be Jewish and nearly beat him to death, according to an Arab paramedic who saved him.

Israeli officials said they had “locked down” the city of Lod in central Israel, the first time such an action has been taken in decades, and arrested 280 people accused of rioting across the country.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the violence as “anarchy” and convened an emergency cabinet meeting that lasted into the early hours of Thursday to “give more powers to the police” and enforce curfews “as needed.”

Israeli Arabs gathering next to a mosque during clashes among Jews, the Israeli police and Arabs, in the mixed town of Lod on Wednesday.Credit...Heidi Levine/Associated Press


The sudden turn of events, which in less than two full days has escalated from a localized dispute in Jerusalem to full-scale aerial war over Gaza to widespread civil unrest, shocked Israelis and Palestinians alike, and left some of the country’s most experienced leaders fearing that the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict was heading into new territory.

For years, leaders warned that a failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might eventually lead to fighting within the state of Israel itself, said Tzipi Livni, a veteran former cabinet minister and former chief negotiator in peace talks with the Palestinians.

“And this is exactly what is happening now,” she said. “What was maybe under the surface has now exploded, and created a combination that is really horrific.”

“I don’t want to use the words ‘civil war,’” she added. “But this is something that is new, this is unbearable, this is horrific, and I’m very worried.”

Israeli artillery firing toward Gaza on Wednesday.Credit...Dan Balilty for The New York Times


The unrest has shifted the Palestinian conflict to world attention after several years in which attempts to resolve it had faded from both the global and domestic agenda. Once a centerpiece of international diplomacy, there have been no serious peace talks since the Obama administration.
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Updates

Israel attacked Gaza with ground forces, escalating the conflict.

The number and range of Hamas rockets has caught Israelis by surprise.

Violence could hurt Israeli economy, ratings agency warns.


President Donald J. Trump sidelined the Palestinian conflict, and persuaded four Arab governments to normalize relations with Israel, shattering decades of Arab consensus that resolving the Palestinian conflict and ending the occupation had to come first.

For weeks, ethnic tensions had been rising in Jerusalem, the center of the conflict. In April, far-right Jews marched through the city center, chanting “Death to Arabs,” and mobs of both Jews and Arabs attacked each other.

Palestinian anger increased as a deadline to expel several families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, approached — a case that quickly became a stand-in for historic expulsions of Palestinians from land in Israel.

The situation finally boiled over after a police raid on one of Islam’s holiest sites, the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, on Monday, which the police said was in response to stone-throwing by Palestinian demonstrators.

Hamas launched long-range rockets at Jerusalem on Monday evening, prompting Israel to respond with airstrikes. The military conflict also unleashed a wave of protests and rioting in Arab areas across Israel that night.


An Israeli family after a rocket strike from Gaza in the city of Ashkelon on Wednesday.Credit...Dan Balilty for The New York Times


As the violence escalated, diplomats around the world called for both sides to end the fighting.

Speaking to reporters, President Joseph R. Biden said that he had spoken “for a while” to Mr. Netanyahu on Wednesday and said his expectation was that tensions would be “closing down sooner rather than later.” Mr. Biden added that “Israel has a right to defend itself, when you have thousands of rockets flying into your territory.”

Officials in several Arab countries, including some that had normalized relations with Israel, criticized its actions. Saudi Arabia, which has not normalized relations with Israel, condemned “in the strongest terms the blatant attacks carried out by the Israeli occupation forces against the sanctity of the Al Aqsa Mosque.”

In Kuwait and Istanbul, there were protests on Tuesday night.




While the immediate triggers for the Palestinian rioting were the Aqsa mosque, the Sheikh Jarrah case and the Gaza conflict, the riots also gave vent to years of pent-up anger from Israel’s Arab minority, which represents about 20 percent of the population.

They have full citizenship and many have become lawmakers, judges and senior civil servants. But rights advocates say they are nevertheless victims of dozens of discriminatory laws, not least a recent law that downgraded the status of the Arabic language and said that only Jews had the right to determine the nature of the Israeli state.


“The way that we are treated is as though we shouldn’t be here,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian political analyst from Haifa, a northern city in Israel, and a former legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization. “We are the people who they mistakenly did not ethnically cleanse from this place.”

In the central city of Lod, the government declared a state of emergency early Wednesday after a synagogue, school and several vehicles were burned by Arab rioters on Monday and Tuesday nights.



Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system in Ashkelon, intercepting rockets from Gaza.Credit...Dan Balilty for The New York Times


A Palestinian citizen, Moussa Hassouna, was shot dead by a Jewish resident during the disturbances on Monday night, and another wave of unrest followed his funeral 24 hours later.

The Israeli police said that Arab mobs were pulling Jews from their homes and trying to kill them.

“I feel like it’s 100 years ago, and I’m a defenseless Jew in the pogroms,” said Shabtai Pessin, 27, standing in a burned-out classroom at a religious school in Lod. “What’s our sin? Wanting a Jewish state after 2000 years of exile?”

In the northern city of Acre, a popular Jewish fish restaurant was set on fire, while Arab Bedouins attacked police stations and passing cars in the Negev desert, in southern Israel.

On Wednesday, these riots prompted crowds of Jews to respond. Video distributed on Wednesday night showed mobs attempting to break into an Arab family’s apartment; smashing the windows of shops they believed to be Arab-owned; and setting up roadblocks to catch Arab drivers.

In Lod, Arab families feared revenge attacks that summoned up memories of past traumas. Thousands of Palestinians fled their homes there in 1948, never to return.

“I still feel unsure whether I can keep living here,” said Maha Nakib, 50, an administrator and former City Council member in Lod. “I fear they will try to expel us from our homes.”

In the cities of Or Akiva and Beersheva, Jews stoned the cars of people they believed to be Arab. In Tiberias, they threw rocks at hotels housing Arabs, who hurled objects from their windows in return. Cars were set on fire in several towns.

And an Arab mob in Acre ransacked a Jewish-owned hotel.

“It’s happening as we speak,” the hotel’s owner, Evan Fallenberg, said by phone on Wednesday night.

“People are saying this is a rupture that we won’t be able to overcome. I don’t believe that — I know my friendships are lasting ones. But it is going to put everything to the test. We’re headed into something extremely difficult and dangerous, and I don’t know where this is going to end or how.”

 

Israeli vaccine results show effectiveness, but cases are rising VOX Israel has vaccinated the highest percentage of its citizens of any country in the world, and the results thus far have been encouraging. Just 63 of the 428,000 Israelis who have received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine contracted the coronavirus one week post-inoculation. [The New York Times / Isabel Kershner] Of those that did get sick, none were hospitalized or had a fever over 101 degrees Fahrenheit, indicating the vaccine may also make Covid-19 cases less severe — though the sample size is small. [The Times of Israel / Nathan Jeffay] Despite the mass vaccination drive, Israel is still hovering at about 7,000 cases per day, a decrease from the 9,000 the country was seeing last week. Officials have imposed a third lockdown and will shut down its only international airport. [The Wall Street Journal / Felicia Schwartz and Dov Lieber] Experts believe mutations in the virus are to blame for continued high case counts. [The Jerusalem Post / Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman] While Israel’s vaccination campaign has been highly successful, they have enforced vaccine inequity along the border wall with the Palestinian Authority. Israel says it is not responsible for vaccinating Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza. [The Times of Israel / Jacob Magid] United Nations experts have called Israel’s policy “unacceptable”, with Palestinians and allies abroad decrying the disparities the country’s health ministers are enforcing. [CNN / Sam Kiley]

Israel's government collapses, triggering yet another election

 

A protracted political crisis revolving around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal troubles brings down the coalition government.

VOX

For the fourth time in two years, Israel will hold elections for prime minister and parliament. The government — a tense coalition of the conservative Likud party and the centrist Blue and White party — collapsed Tuesday, forcing another round of elections on March 23. [NYT / Isabel Kershner] That coalition failed to pass a national budget before Tuesday night’s deadline. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will look to stay in power once again in an attempt to work around the current agreement that would have his main rival, Benny Gantz, take over in November 2021. [NPR / Daniel Estrin] Netanyahu and Gantz blamed each other for the political crisis. Netanyahu told reporters that “Likud did not want this election” but his party would “win big.” Gantz responded by saying Netanyahu’s comments were “more lies than words.” [BBC News] The current government was formed in May, when after a contentious election, Gantz agreed to set aside his opposition to Netanyahu and share power with his rival as Israel battled the Covid-19 pandemic and an economic crisis. [WSJ / Dov Lieber and Felicia Schwartz] Netanyahu is facing corruption charges, and many believe he purposely did not pass the budget so that the new elections would delay his trial. “Netanyahu is taking us to elections just so he doesn’t have to show up in court,” Gantz said in a statement. [Bloomberg / Amy Teibel and Ivan Levingston]

Rapprochement in the Middle East

 Israel and the UAE just struck a historic peace deal. It’s a big win for Trump.

A lot of details remain to be worked out, but this is still a really big agreement.

VOX

• On Thursday, Israel and the United Arab Emirates announced a historic peace deal. The agreement calls for the normalization of relations, cooperation in the search for a coronavirus vaccine, and the temporary suspension of Israel’s annexation efforts in the West Bank. [Vox / Alex Ward]
•  
• The deal makes the UAE just the third Arab country to establish a formal diplomatic relationship with Israel, and both countries say they plan to establish embassies now that the agreement is in place. [CNN / Betsy Klein]
•  
• It’s also backed by the US and by Trump, who said on Thursday that UAE and Israel representatives will meet at the White House for a signing ceremony in the near future. [WSJ / Felicia Schwartz]
•  
•  But it's unclear how long annexation efforts will remain suspended: On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that "there is no change to our plans to apply sovereignty over Judea and Samaria" — the biblical name for the West Bank often used in Israel. [Twitter / Raphael Ahren]

NY TIMES

• For the past 16 months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had doggedly pursued a right-wing dream that he saw as securing his legacy: annexing West Bank territory that the Palestinians counted on for a future state, potentially dealing a death blow to a two-state solution.

  On Thursday, with his annexation plan already running aground, Mr. Netanyahu abruptly walked away from it. Instead, he exulted in a potential legacy achievement of an entirely different character — one that, unlike annexation, could only improve Israel’s ties with the West and much of the Arab world.

  The announcement in Washington that the United Arab Emirates had agreed to a “full normalization of relations” with Israel in exchange for Mr. Netanyahu’s agreement to “suspend” his annexation push amounted to a breathtaking turnabout for the veteran Israeli premier.

  His drive for sovereignty on the West Bank had pushed Mr. Netanyahu into a corner: He was hectored by European leaders, rebuffed by his coalition partners, and distracted from a pandemic that was rapidly spiraling out of his control, even as the goal of annexation seemed ever more elusive.

  But the agreement with the Emiratis allowed Mr. Netanyahu, who has craved a historic achievement to cap his tenure as Israel’s longest-serving leader, to rank himself alongside Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin, forerunners who struck peace accords with the nation’s former bitter enemies, Egypt and Jordan.

  The agreement allows the U.A.E., too, to enhance its international standing, which has been deeply damaged over its central role in a war that has turned Yemen into a humanitarian disaster, and over its proxy role in the conflict ravaging Libya. By making an end to annexation the price for bringing into the open a robust diplomatic relationship that had long been one of the Middle East’s worst-kept secrets, 

  Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator for Republican and Democratic administrations, said that another lure for the Emiratis was the possibility of obtaining advanced weaponry they have long sought, which the United States sells only to countries at peace with Israel to preserve its qualitative military edge in the region.

  The rapprochement underscored the shifting political dynamics of a region where Sunni Arab states increasingly see Iran as a greater enemy than Israel and are less willing to condition relations on a resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians. But the big player remains Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s richest country and caretaker of the Islamic holy sites in Mecca and Medina. Analysts said they suspected that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, would like to take such a step but will refrain given conservative elements in his country.

  “This is all about Trump being able to say, ‘Look what a great dealmaker I am, I’ve brought peace to the Middle East,’ and about Bibi being able to distract Israelis for a few hours,” said Anshel Pfeffer, a biographer of Mr. Netanyahu, referring to him by his nickname. Mr. Pfeffer had boldly predicted in May that the prime minister would never fulfill his annexation pledges.

  Meanwhile Palestinians felt abandoned by an Arab nation leaving them to remain locked in an untenable status quo even without the threat of annexation.

  For Mr. Netanyahu, the diplomatic coup came as a throwback of sorts to a time before the coronavirus, before he required three elections to defeat a political novice and form a government, before his indictment on corruption charges including bribery threatened to not only end his career but also send him to prison.

  His stock had momentarily soared early in the pandemic, but it has plunged since: Israel’s caseload now is greater than China’s, its hospital system is approaching overload and its schools are planning a reopening that many fear will be a disaster.

  More than 800,000 Israelis are out of work, and protesters have been flooding the streets and clamoring outside Mr. Netanyahu’s residence several times a week in a demonstration of sustained political anger that experts say modern Jerusalem has never seen.

  With his criminal trial set to ramp up early next year, Mr. Netanyahu has threatened to take Israel to a fourth election, in hopes of legislating his way out of the dock. But a poll this week showed him again falling short of a majority in Parliament.

  “He wasn’t functioning the way he was expected to, and this is the first time in a long period where he shows leadership and brings to the table something that no other politician allegedly can,” Ms.Shimrit Meir, an Israeli analyst of the Arab world said. “The subtext is that he’s still got it: He’s still a leader, and the others are merely politicians.” Dahlia Scheindlin, a left-wing analyst and pollster, said that even Israelis who dislike Mr. Netanyahu see him as the country’s foremost statesman. “He knows that it keeps the crown of ‘King Bibi’ on his head in the country’s eyes,” she said. 

  He reminded critics that he had long promised that Israel could gain international acceptance even without a settlement with the Palestinians.

Israel Heads to Record Third Election, Extending Deadlock

Unable to form a government after two elections, the deeply polarized country will return to the polls for a third time in less than a year, most likely in March.

NY TIMES

Having failed to form a government after two elections, Israel barreled toward a record third on Wednesday, extending the political deadlock that has paralyzed the country for nearly a year and assuring at least three more months of bitter, divisive campaigning and government dysfunction.

And with the country hopelessly divided over the fate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been indicted on three counts of corruption, there is little indication that the third election will be any more decisive than the first two.

Israel’s inability to break the logjam has raised questions about the political system its citizens often boast is the only democracy in the Middle East. A democracy often compared to that of Britain or the United States is now evoking comparisons to the less stable governments of Greece and Italy.

“What used to be a celebration of democracy has become a moment of shame for this building,” Yair Lapid, a former finance minister and political rival of the prime minister, said on the floor of Parliament Wednesday night.

The Parliament had until midnight Wednesday to form a majority government. But the hour passed with the two leading candidates for prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu and the former army chief Benny Gantz, unable to negotiate a power-sharing agreement.

Until a new government is created, Mr. Netanyahu remains prime minister of a caretaker government.

By clinging to office, analysts say, Mr. Netanyahu would at least leave himself in better position to negotiate a plea bargain with state prosecutors, and could perhaps avoid trial altogether in exchange for retiring from public life.

In the next election, expected to be in March, he will have to campaign as a defendant in three criminal cases: He was indicted on Nov. 21 on bribery and other corruption charges, accused of trading official favors worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Israeli media moguls for lavish gifts and extravagantly positive press.

It is unclear whether the indictment itself will hurt his chances, though, since the outlines of the cases against him have been known for months.

Israeli opinion polls show that another contest between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gantz would result in the same stalemate: Mr. Gantz’s Blue and White party nearly always comes out slightly ahead, but falls short of enough partners to form a majority coalition.

A poll on Tuesday by Israel’s Channel 13, however, showed Blue and White opening up a four-seat lead over Likud, and the anti-Netanyahu parties combined reaching 60 seats, compared with 52 seats for the prime minister’s party and its allies. A 61-seat majority is needed to form a government.

The circumstances have shifted in other unhappy ways for Mr. Netanyahu: He is now contending with a noisy rebellion in the ranks of his own conservative Likud party from a growing contingent of local officials and activists who fear that his refusal to step aside could hand power to Israel’s center-left coalition. Likud on Wednesday tentatively called a primary contest for the party’s leadership on Dec. 26.

So far, Mr. Netanyahu has managed to keep the rebels largely at bay by encouraging his political base to rage against the criminal justice system, fulminating against the news media and political rivals to his left, and dangling promises to the right that if he keeps job, he can capitalize on his close ties to the Trump administration to deliver historic achievements, including annexing territory in the occupied West Bank.

Image

Mr. Netanyahu remains prime minister until a new government is formed, leaving himself in better position to negotiate a plea bargain.Credit...Dan Balilty for The New York Times

Mr. Gantz’s chances in a third round of elections also may have improved after his No. 2, Mr. Lapid, agreed Monday to give up his longstanding insistence on eventually succeeding Mr. Gantz as party leader, and potentially as prime minister.

Polls have shown that Mr. Lapid’s rotation agreement with Mr. Gantz was costing Blue and White two to four seats in Parliament.

Most Israelis are fed up with the contest and resent the idea of having a third election.

It will cost this small country some $500 million at a time when it is running a deficit, will prevent critical problems like overcrowded hospitals and failing schools from being addressed, and will make the military wait for approval of a new five-year spending plan despite growing threats in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Still, Yohanan Plesner, president of the nonpartisan Israel Democracy Institute, said Israel’s governing institutions remained robust, particularly the law-enforcement authorities that had just indicted a sitting prime minister for the first time.

Despite inherent flaws in the electoral system and some legal ambiguities in how to deal with a prime minister under indictment, he said, “I don’t think there is cause for long term alarm.”

Mr. Plesner also noted that Israel was in good company. Since the mid-1990s it has held elections an average of every 2.3 years, but it now looks more like Greece, which held three elections within 10 months.

“This instability is not something to be proud of,” he said, “but it is our lot and at the same time Israeli democracy is solid.”

Image

Benny Gantz, a centrist former military chief, won more seats in Parliament than Mr. Netanyahu but not enough to form a majority.Credit...Abir Sultan/EPA, via Shutterstock

BENNY GANTZ

 The prime minister’s rival is a three-star general who has held together a new coalition.

Israelis may be heading back to the polls in a fog of unprecedented and unresolved legal problems. While the law allows an indicted prime minister to remain in office, it says nothing about whether a candidate charged with serious offenses should be allowed to form a new government.

Israel’s attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, has so far avoided issuing an opinion on that question, saying it was still only theoretical. But on Monday, the Supreme Court asked him to say by next week if or when he would clarify his views.

The brewing revolt within Likud adds to the challenges facing Mr. Netanyahu.

Gideon Saar, a popular former government minister, has drawn a growing number of local officials into open opposition to Mr. Netanyahu. The only contender so far who has pledged to challenge Mr. Netanyahu in the party’s primary contest, Mr. Saar has argued that a third election with Mr. Netanyahu in charge could cost the right its hold on power.

Mr. Saar’s campaign has unfurled a growing list of endorsements by Likud mayors, party leaders and officials in West Bank settlements.

“There’s been no proper government in Israel for more than a year and there’s no end in sight,” said Shimon Lankri, the Likud mayor of Acre, explaining why he switched to support Mr. Saar.

Image

Israel's attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, announcing Mr. Netanyahu’s indictment last month.Credit...Amir Levy/Getty Images

As the calls for Mr. Netanyahu to step aside have grown louder, he has fashioned an elaborate argument for why he should be allowed to continue as prime minister, at least for the first six months of a rotation agreement with Mr. Gantz.

Given the Trump administration’s favorable disposition toward Mr. Netanyahu, he has argued, Israel’s right wing has a window of opportunity — which could close as the 2020 presidential election heats up, let alone if Mr. Trump is defeated — to press Mr. Trump for important new favors.

Chief among them is approval for Israel’s annexation of the Jordan Valley, a loosely populated agricultural region where Mr. Netanyahu insists Israel must maintain a military presence under any settlement with the Palestinians.

Mr. Netanyahu announced that he had spoken of the idea with Mr. Trump in a phone call on Dec. 1, and then with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at a meeting in Lisbon on Dec. 4. But David Schenker, the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, told reporters on Friday that Mr. Netanyahu had presented Mr. Pompeo no formal plan for annexing the area, and reaffirmed the administration’s view that “the ultimate disposition of territory is to be determined between the parties,” not through unilateral moves.

Mr. Netanyahu is also talking up a defense treaty with the United States, although Israeli military leaders have long played down the wisdom of such an agreement, saying that Israel can already count on American support whenever it is needed and that a formal pact could tie Israel’s hands in a regional conflict.

Polls show that most Israelis hold Mr. Netanyahu responsible for the return to the ballot box. But on the right, some of Mr. Netanyahu’s defenders have pinned the continued political impasse on Mr. Gantz for refusing to enter a unity government led by Mr. Netanyahu, if only for a few months, or on Avigdor Liberman, the leader of the ultranationalist, secular Yisrael Beiteinu party and a former Netanyahu ally who broke ranks with the right-wing, religious alliance.

Image

Most Israelis are fed up with the perpetual campaign and resent having to vote a third time.Credit...Dan Balilty for The New York Times

About the only thing the parties seemed ready to agree on was a new election date — though not without some Talmudic debate and another round of 11th-hour brinkmanship.

The political calendar dictated Tuesday, March 10, but that is Purim, a Jewish feast when revelers often drink themselves into oblivion, not conducive to performing a sober civic duty. The prior Tuesday is a memorial day for fallen soldiers.

The third Tuesday in March coincides with the anniversary of the death of an obscure Hasidic rabbi. Ultra-Orthodox parties were concerned that too many of their voters would be out of the country that day, making pilgrimages to the rabbi’s grave in Poland.

Giving up on Tuesdays, the lawmakers tentatively agreed on Monday, March 2 — though that falls smack in the middle of the policy conference of Aipac, the pro-Israel lobbying group, a destination for a yearly pilgrimage to Washington by major Israeli politicians.

But even a vote on that agreement was held up by haggling between Likud and Blue and White and was unlikely to be decided until Thursday morning.

No matter the date, a third election may not be the charm. If that vote also fails to produce a government, Israeli law would mandate a fourth.